Saturday, February 28, 2015
The Benefits of Solar Energy
Friday, February 27, 2015
Hey, Could I Ask You a Few Questions? The Art of Surveys (FS094)
So many answers to current problems are in talking to your customers. That’s why we make guides and courses on defining your target market one of the first orders of business here at Fizzle. And yet, it’s a weapon even successful entrepreneurs forget to use.
'House of Cards' fans are confused about when Season 3 arrives on Netflix
If American history has taught us anything it's that new seasons of House of Cards arrive at 3:01 a.m. ET, not 12:01 ET, you confused East Coasters
Mashable confirmed with Netflix that all 13 episodes of Season 3 will come out on Feb. 27 at 3:01 a.m. ET and 12:01 a.m. PT, so you still have time gather snacks and beverages
Even House of Cards showrunner Beau Willimon can't keep the release time straight:
More about Entertainment, Netflix, Tv, Social Media, and House Of CardsSorry folks, had my math off with the time diff here in London. To be clear @HouseofCards launch is 12am PT, 3AM EST, 8AM GMT. Game on!
— Beau Willimon (@BeauWillimon) February 26, 2015 Read more...
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Vurb Is Crazy Enough To Fight Google
Google Search was not built for mobile. It’s all about lists of web pages, but the small screen is ruled by apps. That’s why if Google launched today, it might look a lot like Vurb…which did launch today. Vurb is a mobile search engine that pulls info from partnered apps like Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes, and deeplinks you out to apps like Uber and Google Maps. Rather than send… Read MoreThe 8 Rules of Influencer Marketing: How to Find Influencers (& Become One Yourself)
Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to expand your company’s reach, increase your credibility in your industry, and establish yourself as a thought leader within your field of expertise. However, influencer marketing can be somewhat of a vague concept, and like content marketing, there is more than one way to become an influencer and leverage your status in your marketing campaigns.
In today’s post, we’ll be looking at eight informal “rules” for becoming an influencer in your field, finding other influencers, and getting other people to sit up and pay attention to what you have to say. Before we dive into that, though, let’s examine what influencer marketing really means.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
You can think of influencer marketing as a way to leverage the status of an individual within your organization to boost the profile and standing of the company as a whole. Many influencers also use their status and reach to launch their own companies or consulting businesses.
Many of the world’s leading influencers’ names are synonymous with those of their organizations. WordStream’s own founder and Chief Technology Officer, Larry Kim, is considered an influencer in the paid search, content marketing, and social media spaces. Larry frequently speaks at conferences around the world, and his extensive knowledge and thought leadership in search has elevated not only his own profile, but that of WordStream as a company.
The audience eagerly awaiting Larry’s paid search presentation at Inbound 2014
However, influencer marketing isn’t merely capitalizing on someone’s image to increase sales. More often, influencer marketing is about establishing that individual as a trusted authority in their area of expertise and defining the conversations that center around a given topic; in Larry’s case, paid search, content marketing, and social media.
So, if influencer marketing is using the status of a single individual to influence others, but isn’t solely used to gain leads or increase sales, then what is it? How can you become an influencer? And how can you create marketing campaigns that speak to influencers in your industry? Here are eight tips that will put you on the path to influencer marketing mastery and increase your visibility in your industry.
Influencer Marketing Rule 1: Find Influencers in Your Industry
Although you probably already have an idea of who the movers and shakers are in your field, you need to find – and follow – these people to see what they’re talking about.
Social media is hands-down the easiest way to find influencers. Do a search by topic to identify conversations and see who is making their voice heard. Follow influential people, and check out who they follow. Participate in regular conversations relevant to your industry (like, say, the weekly #ppcchat discussion on Twitter).
Alternatively, you can use free online tools like BuzzSumo and Topsy to see who’s sharing your content (or anyone else’s content), as well as how influential they are. In Topsy, simply enter the URL of a piece of content and check out the results:
For BuzzSumo users, it’s just as easy to identify influential people and the content they’re sharing. Click on the “Influencers” tab at the top of the page, enter your search terms (in this example, “PPC”), and check out the results.
It’s worth noting that while you can sort results by several criteria, such as page and domain authority, followers, retweet ratio, and average retweets, the results won’t always display in order. As you can see in the example above, Larry has better performance in every metric than PPC Hero, which is listed as the top result. However, it’s still a very handy way to see who the major players are in your industry.
There are other things you can do to identify influencers in your field. Identify conferences that are relevant to your industry and check out the list of speakers. Ever notice that the same people tend to crop up in a variety of industry publications as columnists and guest posters? These individuals are probably influencers. What names do you hear over and over again in your field? Which articles are constantly being linked back to?
Even a little research will quickly yield a list of influencers whom you should follow and listen to.
Influencer Marketing Rule 2: Understand the Difference Between Influencers and Advocates
Before you can become an influencer, it’s important to realize that advocating for a cause or subject area is not the same as being influential. You can be the world’s biggest cheerleader for content marketing, for example, but that doesn’t necessarily make you a content marketing influencer.
Image via womma.org
To be perceived as a genuine influencer in a given area, you need to shape and define the conversation, not just advocate for whatever it is that’s being discussed. Are you asking questions that nobody else has thought of (or dared to ask), or are you just repeating what others have said? Is your take on a topic genuinely new, or are you publishing content about the same things as everyone else? Do your ideas and opinions challenge existing conventions about your industry, or do they get lost in the noise?
If you want to become an influencer and reach individuals who are already considered influential in your field, you have to define the conversation, not just nod your head.
Influencer Marketing Rule 3: Own Your Niche
If you’re going to become an authority in your industry, you need to own your niche. It isn’t enough to know a great deal about a few subjects – you need to zero in on one hyper-specific area of focus and make it yours.
A couple of years ago, Larry started discussing the AdWords Quality Score algorithm. Some people dismissed his work on Quality Score, claiming it wasn’t important enough to warrant the kind of attention Larry was devoting to it.
They were wrong.
Larry’s examination of Quality Score, and what it means for AdWords advertisers, is a prime example of owning your niche. Rather than publish content (and host webinars, and speak at conferences) about paid search in general, Larry owned his niche by refining his area of focus even further to Quality Score. Today, Larry is considered one of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to paid search, but he owned an already specialized topic and set to work proving himself as an expert in one of several specific areas – one that many people had overlooked or written off.
You can read Alistair’s piece here, and Larry’s rebuttal here.
In addition, Larry’s authoritative Quality Score content even prompted Google to address the issue of Quality Score in AdWords.
“When it comes to the details of how exactly the AdWords auction works, for obvious reasons, they would prefer not to give away the secret sauce,” Larry says. “Our research pointed out some obvious loopholes in their literature and they were forced to update it. You know how I know? They didn’t update their Quality Score info for six years. Then, just a few months after my Quality Score bonanza (I think we published 50 or so articles on the topic, as well as a few dozen conference sessions), they update their Quality Score info and released a new white paper called “Settling the Quality Score” (that sounds like a response to something, doesn’t it?). While I’m not called out by name in the refresh, they do refute and confirm specific points that I’ve brought up in the past.”
Influencer Marketing Rule 4: Don’t Confuse Reach with Influence
Many people assume that to become an effective and respected influencer in their field, they have to reach as many people as possible. However, things are a little more complicated than that.
Influencer marketing isn’t just about reaching a lot of people – it’s about reaching the right people. After all, you’ll need at least the implicit endorsement of other experts in your field if your ideas are to gain any traction.
This doesn’t mean carpet-bombing the entirety of Twitter with links to your latest brilliant blog post, but making sure the right people see your content and amplify it. The first thing you should do? Start sharing other influencers’ content.
“First, take an interest in amplifying other people’s content,” says Larry. “The principle of reciprocity says that people are more likely to take an interest in your stuff if you take an interest in their stuff first.”
Remember – reach is not the same as influence. It’s more important your content reaches the right people than the most people.
Influencer Marketing Rule 5: Do What Works For You, Not Your Peers
When you’re trying to make a name for yourself, it’s all too easy to look at tactics and strategies your peers (or personal heroes) are using and adopt them for your own purposes. While this might work sometimes, blatantly copying someone else’s approach to influencer marketing won’t always have the desired results. In some cases, it could even harm your personal brand and damage your credibility.
Rather than ape someone else’s techniques for establishing yourself as an influencer, focus on the content you’re producing. However, don’t just provide quality content to your regular audience – also focus on creating compelling, original content designed specifically to attract the attention of influencers in your industry.
“Create content that is specifically designed to attract the attention of influencers,” says Larry. “For example, we produced original research on Quality Score, click-through rates, and conversion rates last year. This data ended up in hundreds of podcasts, articles, conference sessions, Rand Fishkin’s presentations, etc. because it was new stuff. That’s what influencers do – they share new, interesting content with their audiences.”
You can get citations from big-name influencers if and only if you create content that’s worth citing.
Influencer Marketing Rule 6: Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Community
So, we’ve established that sharing other influencers’ content and creating your own original content are both crucial to influencer marketing, but one pitfall that many people make – even renowned experts – is failing to appreciate the importance of community in their industry.
Please don’t do this in meetings.
Communities – Armies of Cheerleaders (or an Angry Mob with Torches and Pitchforks)
Targeting influencers with your content is essential, but don’t overlook the “little people”; the loyal blog readers who subscribe to your newsletter, retweet your tweets, and leave enthusiastic comments on your posts.
Sure, the small-business owner who always reads your content might not be the most influential follower you have, but without her, you won’t get far as an influencer. As we already discussed, a large following isn’t the sole objective, but it definitely helps. Also remember that negative interactions tend to spread far more quickly and have considerably more impact than positive ones. Blow someone off, and you could regret it.
Not All Communities Are Alike
Even if your content is exceptional, you need to remember that people interact with you and your brand in different ways. Yes, you should be creating content to attract the attention of other influencers, but a keen understanding of the community in your industry is crucial to expanding your reach and making an impact, one of the many excellent points made by Moz’s Senior Community Manager Erica McGillivray in her interview with Elisa from last year (read the full interview here).
Don’t Be ‘That Guy’
Another point worth mentioning here is controversy. Some marketers believe that being deliberately controversial or inflammatory is an excellent way to raise their profile (and therefore, their reach). While this can be true, it’s also a slippery slope, as the community in your field may not respond positively to contentious positions. Contrarian content marketing can be effective, but it’s also something of a touchy subject, depending on the topic in question.
Don’t be ‘that guy.’
You shouldn’t exclusively pander to your audience or community, but avoid being controversial for its own sake – the community will remember, and your reputation is everything. If in doubt, err on the side of caution.
Influencer Marketing Rule 7: Be Genuine, Accessible, and Responsive
Social media has transformed the way people interact online. This means that, misguidedly or otherwise, people expect to be able to directly access the people they follow and respect.
I’m not suggesting that you respond to every single tweet or personally reply to every mention on Google+, but I am recommending that you avoid becoming the kind of influencer who only tweets links to their content and never interacts with their followers. If you use social media analytics tool BuzzSumo, you’ll already know the name of these individuals – broadcasters.
Projecting an image of accessibility can go a long way toward improving your standing and increasing your visibility in your field. Social media is an immensely powerful tool in influencer marketing, but don’t forget the “social” part of social media. Interact with your followers, and be an active part of the community.
Also, don’t be afraid to show a little humanity in your online presence. Rand Fishkin’s raw, honest post about his struggles with depression and the pressures of growing a business struck a powerful chord with Moz’s audience (myself included), and helped remind the SEO and digital marketing communities that we’re all human.
This kind of honesty and transparency makes it easier for people to connect with you on another level beyond the professional, and shows a more relatable side of you as a person. A great example of this is Larry’s tweets about his young son, Julian, whom Larry jokingly dubbed #ppckid on Twitter:
Sure, these types of tweets might not “perform” as strongly as those focusing on Larry’s content (a point Larry made in his recent post about Twitter Analytics), but that’s not the point. People want to learn from you, but they also want to get to know you.
You’re a person, not a robot – act accordingly.
Influencer Marketing Rule 8: Be Patient
Success rarely happens overnight, and this maxim most definitely applies to influencer marketing.
In many ways, becoming an influencer in your field is similar to content marketing as a discipline. Many would-be influencers give up out of frustration, having shared the very best content they could, for a long time, with little or no tangible results. With this in mind, check out this interesting graph from one of Rand’s SlideShare decks on why content marketing fails:
Just as many businesses give up on content marketing right before the payoff, many would-be influencers lack the patience and discipline to go the distance and keep publishing.
Take Larry and WordStream, for example. Larry started blogging around 2009. Imagine if he had given up in 2011, just two years later. In 2012, the WordStream blog and Larry himself began to receive a great deal more exposure in the paid search industry as a result of hard work and consistent effort. External recognition such as press pickups and even television interviews followed this considerable increase in blog traffic.
Larry – and WordStream, by association – wouldn’t be where he is today if he hadn’t persevered.
If you want to become an influencer in your field, you have to be willing to put in the hours (and days, weeks, months, maybe even years) it takes to establish a name for yourself. This will be hard, and you will be tempted to throw in the towel at some point, but you must persevere if you’re going to succeed. Good things come to those who wait.
How to Make Friends and Influence People
Influencer marketing is a powerful tool in today’s highly competitive digital media environment. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to influencer marketing. You have to be willing to try new things and see what works and what doesn’t.
However, hopefully this post has given you some ideas for establishing a name for yourself as an influencer in your field. If you have any questions for either Larry or myself, be sure to leave them in the comments and we’ll answer them as best we can.
Are Your Subscribers "Swiping Left"?
How to Stop Spam Bots from Ruining Your Analytics Referral Data
Posted by jaredgardner
A few months back, my agency started seeing a referral traffic spike in our Google Analytics account. At first, I got excited. Someone is linking to us and people are clicking. Hooray!
Wrong! How very, very wrong. As I dug deeper, I saw that most of this referral traffic was sent from spammers, and mostly from one spammer named Vitaly Popov (or, as I like to call him, “the most recent pain in my ass”).
The domains he owns have been giving our company’s site and most of our clients’ sites a few hundred sessions per month, enough to throw off the analytics data in many cases.
His sites aren’t the only ones I’ll cover in this how-to, but his spam network has been the biggest nuisance lately. If you’re getting spam referrers in your analytics, you should be able to follow the same steps to stop these data-skewing nimcompoops from spoiling your data, too.
Why do I need to worry about blocking and filtering these sites?
There are two main reasons I’m motivated to block these on all sites that I work with. First: corrupt analytics data. A few hundred hits a month on a site like Moz.com isn’t going to move the needle when compared to the sheer volume of sessions they have daily. However, on a small site for a local plumber, 30 sessions per day is likely going to be 70% spam referral traffic, suffocating the remaining legitimate traffic and making marketing analysis a frustrating endeavor.
Second: server load and security. I didn’t ask them to crawl or visit my site. Their visits are using my server resources for something that I don’t want or need. An overloaded server means slower load times, which translate to higher bounce rates and lower rankings. On top of that, who knows what else they’re doing on my site while they’re there. They could easily be looking for WordPress, plugin and server vulnerabilities.
Popular referral spam domains
Using WHOIS.net, I found that Mr. Popov’s spam network includes these domains:
- darodar.com (and various subdomains)
- econom.co
- ilovevitaly.co (and other TLD variations)
Other spammers plaguing the web include:
- semalt.com (and various subdomains)
- buttons-for-website.com
- see-your-website-here.com
Many other sites have come and gone. These are just the sites that have been active lately.
Why are they hitting my site?
Why are people going through so much effort to crawl the web without blocking themselves from analytics? Spam! So much spam, it still blows me away. I looked into a few of the sites listed above. Three of the most prolific ones are doing it for very different reasons.
See-your-website-here.com
This site takes the cake for being the most frustrating. This site is using referrer spam as a form of lead generation. What is their product you ask? Web spam. You can pay see-your-website-here.com to perform web spam for your company as a form of lead generation. The owner of this domain was kind enough to make his WHOIS information public. His name is Ben Sykes and he’s from London.
Semalt.com
Semalt.com and I have had a tumultuous relationship at best. Semalt is an SEO product that’s designed to give on- and off-page analysis such as keyword usage and link metrics. Their products seem to be somewhat legit. However, their business practices are not. Semalt uses a bot to crawl the web and index webpage data, but they don’t disable analytics tracking like most respectable bots do. They have a form to remove your site from being crawled at http://semalt.com/project_crawler.php, which is ever so nice of them. Of course, I tried this months ago and they still crawled our site. I ended up talking with a representative from Semalt.com via Twitter after I wrote this article: How to Stop Semalt.com from Plaguing Your Google Analytics Data. I've documented our interactions and the outcome of that project in the article.
Darodar.com, econom.co, and ilovevitaly.com
This network appears to exist for the purpose of directing affiliate traffic to shopping sites such as AliExpress.com and eBay.com. I am guessing that the site won't pay out to the affiliate unless the traffic results in a purchase, which seems unlikely. The sub-domain shopping.ilovevitaly.com used to redirect to aliexpress.com directly, but now it goes to a landing page that links to a variety of online retailers.
How to stop spam bots
Block via .htaccess
The best way to block referrers from accessing your site at all is to block them in your .htaccess file in the root directory of your domain. You can copy and paste the following code into your .htaccess file, assuming you’re on an Apache server. I like this method better than just blocking the domain in analytics because it prevents spam bots from hitting your server altogether. If you want to get creative, you can redirect the traffic back to their site.
# Block Russian Referrer Spam
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly.\.ru/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly\.org/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly\.info/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*iloveitaly\.ru/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*econom\.co/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*savetubevideo\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*kambasoft\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*buttons\-for\-website\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*semalt\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*darodar\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F,L]
Warning: .htaccess is a very powerful file that dictates how your server behaves. If you upload an .htaccess file with one character out of place, you will likely take down the whole site. Before you make any changes to the file, I would suggest making a backup. If you don't feel comfortable making these edits, see the WordPress plug-in option below.
Analytics filters
By itself, .htaccess won’t solve all of your problems. It will only protect you from future sessions, and it won’t affect the sessions that have already happened. I like to set up filters by country in analytics to remove the historical data, as well as to help filter out any other bots we might find from select countries in the future. Of course this wouldn’t be a good idea if you expect to get legitimate traffic from countries like Russia, Brazil, or Indonesia, but many U.S.-based companies can safely block these countries without losing potential customers. Follow the steps below to set up the filters.
First, click on the "Admin" tab at the top of the page. On the view column you will want to create a "new" view so that you still have an unadulterated report of all traffic in Google Analytics. I named my mine "Filter Bots." After you have your new view selected, click in to the "Filters" section then select the "+New Filter Button."
Setting up filters is pretty simple if you know what setting to use. I like to filter out all traffic from Russia, Brazil, and Indonesia. These are just the countries that have been giving us issues lately. You can add more filters as you need them.
The filter name is just an arbitrary label. I usually just type “block [insert country here].” Next, choose the filter type “custom.” Choose “country” from the “Filter Field” drop down. The “Filter Pattern Field” is where you actually define what countries you are filtering, so make sure you spell them correctly. You can double check your filters by using the “Verify This Filter” button. A graph will pop-up and show you how many sessions will be removed from the last seven days.
I would recommend selecting the “Bot Filtering” check box that is found in “View Settings” within the “Admin” tab. I haven’t seen a change in my data using this feature yet, but it doesn’t hurt to set it up since it’s really easy and maybe Google will decide to block some of these spammers.
Using WordPress? Don’t want to edit your .htaccess file?
I’ve used the plugin Wp-Ban before, and it makes it easy to block unwanted visitors. Wp-ban gives you the ability to ban users by IP, IP range, host name, user agent and referrer URL from visiting your WordPress blog all from within the WordPress admin panel. This a great option for people who don’t want to edit their .htaccess file or don’t feel comfortable doing so.
Conclusion
I hope this helps you block all the pesky spammers out there. There are definitely different ways you can solve this problem, and these are just the ones that have helped me protect analytics data. I’d love to hear how you have dealt with spam bots. Share your stories with me on Twitter or in the comments below.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2015
JonBenet Ramsey investigator doesn't realize Reddit AMAs are public
BOULDER, Colo. — In his most extensive comments on the JonBenet Ramsey case, the former Colorado police chief who led the investigation into the high-profile 1996 slaying of the 6-year-old beauty queen acknowledged online that officers botched the initial handling of the crime scene.
Mark Beckner, former chief of the Boulder Police Department, participated Saturday in an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit. He told the Daily Camera on Tuesday that he didn't realize his comments would filter out to the rest of the world.
See also: 7 Reddit AMAs That Went Horribly Wrong
"I talked to the organizer, and my impression was that this was a members-only type group that talked about unsolved mysteries all around the world," said Beckner, 59. Read more...
More about Social Media and Reddit AmaTuesday, February 24, 2015
Designers Ditch Perfectionism For Instant Feedback With Wake
“How does this look?” That was a surprisingly difficult question to get an answer to until now. Today, Wake launches the private beta of its tool that lets design teams privately share their works-in-progress. Wake’s web and iOS interface make it super quick to post an image to a team’s Wake feed and get comments. Built by a former Facebook designer, Wake already… Read MoreGoogle Acquires Facebook Marketing Startup Toro
Toro, a startup that helps developers promote their apps on Facebook, just announced that it’s been acquired by Google.
The company was originally known as Red Hot Labs, and it’s led by Amitt Mahajan and Joel Poloney. They previously co-founded MyMiniLife, which played a key role in the creation of FarmVille (and was acquired by Zynga). Read MoreLearn From Annoying Mistakes Marketers Make
From repeating email promotions to not making content accessible across all your channels, avoid these common marketing mistakes which can alienate prospects.
We know the modern consumer is demanding and who can blame them? In a world packed with marketing missives and competing products/services, they want to make sure that they get the right product at the right price, all sold with the right service.
It’s why a joined-up cross-channel marketing approach is so vital – but simple marketing mistakes are leaving many customers so irritated that they head elsewhere with their money.
Customer complaint: “Stop haranguing me with irrelevant marketing…”
The Issue: The customer receives an email promoting a product they’ve already bought.
The Solution: Ensure your marketing automation process is properly segmented and maintained, plus the customer’s journey and their identity is fully mapped out within your system. The best approach for ensuring such successful ‘data wrangling’? First, break down silos between your departments so promotions and the resulting data are being fed into a centralised system that everyone and their campaigns can feed into and from.
Secondly, ensure you have an in-house automation specialist whose sole job is to manage and monitor any marketing automation programme to ensure your marketing department isn’t left with egg on its face.
A vast majority (94%) of customers have discontinued communications with a company because they receive irrelevant promotions and messages.
Customer complaint: “Stop making it so damn difficult for me…”
The Issue: The potential customer watches a TV advert or other promotion but can’t find it online to view again.
The Solution: It’s the ultimate goal of any marketer – the customer being so intrigued by your marketing offering that they actively head out to watch it again, perhaps even sharing it with their peers and becoming a brand advocate in the process. Ensure that your fantastic advert is available and easy to find so you can reap the potential benefits.
BMW goes further than many of its competitors to ensure that consumers can explore its TV content. The car maker has its own online TV channel and distributes its commercials on Youtube, creating a truly joined-up strategy for deploying video content. It’s an approach that’s working – according to official Youtube Channel Views data:
Toyota Channel: 207,696 views
Ford Channel: 725,904 views
Audi Channel: 2,303,638 views
BMW Channel: 4,666,412 views
Customer complaint: “Stop fobbing me off…”
The Issue: The customer is forced to listen to a message on a call-centre helpline telling them about the company’s website before they’re put through to an actual human. Worst still, some companies simply direct the consumer to their website, negating the whole ‘human’ issue entirely.
The Solution: There’s a very good chance that the customer has already visited the support section of your website and hasn’t found the answer they were looking for – it’s why they’re calling you in the first place. Alternatively, there are some customers who simply don’t want to go online and would instead prefer to talk to a representative about their issue. In either case, why bother marketing your website via your helpline?
Customer complaint: “Stop wasting my time…”
The Issue: The customer has to sign in again and again to download content, wasting their time and diminishing any goodwill that might have been created by your value-added content marketing strategy.
The Solution: Deploy progressive profiling to avoid annoying customers. Only ask leads for critical information during their first visit (first name, last name, email) and if they show interest, then use progressive profiling to ask more in-depth questions at key stages during the customer’s journey – without running the risk of irritating the prospect.
New tools like unroll.me make it easier for consumers to filter spam emails and unsubscribe from newsletters – so make sure each marketing missive hits its target or risk being locked out for good.
Remember:
- Ensure your marketing automation process is properly segmented and maintained.
- Break down silos between departments to avoid bottlenecks or dead ends.
- Make all your marketing content easily accessible to consumers whatever channel they’re on.
- Don’t waste the consumer’s time; your product/service is supposed to make their life easier, not create more hassle.
Discover why marketing is becoming increasingly challenging with tips from the “Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Cross-Channel Marketing”.
Monday, February 23, 2015
18 photos that bask in golden hour glow
For this week's photo challenge, we asked you to capture the golden hour, meaning the first hour of light after sunrise and the last hour of light before sunset.
The photos we saw were breathtaking — from the warm reds and oranges that shone through beautiful landscapes to the overexposure in portraits shot against soft light.
Our guest host was Jonas Thomasson, a photographer who shoots exclusively during the golden hour in Spain. Scroll through his favorite submissions below.
1. Bridge walker
Thomasson says: Beautiful reflection shot. Read more...
7 Things You Need to Know About New Dynamic Facebook Product Ads
Facebook recently announced the launch of their new dynamic Product Ads, a mobile-friendly ad format that enables retailers to sync their catalog with their Facebook advertising efforts. Available now through Facebook's Marketing Partners, it's coming soon to the self-serve platform.
We already know that Google Shopping ads are incredibly powerful – when you're appealing to consumers demonstrating high commercial intent with super relevant product ads, you can really boost conversion. What is Facebook's attempt at tapping into that intent for retailers going to look like for advertisers?
Here's what you need to know about Facebook Product Ads right now:
1. Facebook Product Ads Come In Single- or Multi-Product Ad Units
Product Ads can display either a single product, or a set of three, each with its own image, description, click target and statistics.
In the above example from Facebook, each of the three product listings would scroll horizontally in a dynamic carousel.
You can create multi-product ads in one of two ways:
- By creating an unpublished Page post first, then create an ad creative using the post,
- Or by creating an unpublished Page post inline, in the same call with ad creative create call.
Learn more about creating multi-product ads here.
2. Templates Save Time on Creative and Help You Scale
Facebook's dynamic templates for Product Ads mean you don't have to spend time configuring your creative for each ad.
These templates work for both single- and multi-product campaigns by pulling images, product names, pricing and more from your product catalog, based on the keywords you use. Because of this integration with your catalog, Facebook will also stop running ads on items once they're out of stock.
Image: Facebook
Dynamic templates work for Newsfeed and sidebar ads and also optimize for cross-device use, so you only need one template to span desktop, mobile and tablet ad display.
In this image using the same multi-product ad example as in point #1, you can see how Facebook uses the information from the different fields to populate Product Ads:
Image: Facebook
3. Facebook PAs Are Not Google PLAs
If you're already using Google PLAs, Facebook Product Ads should be about the same except they're in social and not search, right?
Not at all.
Facebook Product Ads are far more similar to Google's remarketing display ads. They're not serving up a variety of products from different advertisers in response to a keyword search so people can comparison shop. Instead, they're targeted based on a consumer's history on the advertiser's site or in their app, or using Facebook's targeting parameters.
Facebook isn't limited by ad inventory the way Google is, either. Your Google Shopping ads can only show to people searching on specific terms so yes, the intent is there, but the search volume and ad display space is limited. People are on Facebook all the time and there's so much more available space in the Newsfeed – there are plenty of opportunities for ad targeting. Newsfeed ads also render better on mobile and have a more native feel than search ads.
4. Facebook Products Ads Aren't Facebook Exchange, Either
As Facebook noted in their announcement, advertisers have been able to run dynamic ads on Facebook through DSPs and retargeting partners with access to the Facebook Exchange. However, those solutions only ran on desktop and third parties were not able to properly measure or attribute cross-device conversions.
And of course, Facebook has ALL THE DATA. As Michelle Alfano pointed out on the RKG Blog: "Advertisers will also now be able to leverage Facebook’s proprietary user information in targeting appropriate audiences, something that DSPs were never able to use in targeting users with dynamic creative."
5. Product Ads Come With Custom Audience Improvements
Facebook is upping the targeting game for Product Ads users with improvements to Custom Audiences that enable retailers to reach more relevant audiences.
Through a new feature in Ads Manager and Power Editor, you'll be able to build audiences based on parameters like "People who haven't visited in a certain amount of time," and "People visiting specific web pages but not others."
You'll also be able to build audiences for different products within your catalog.
6. Product Catalogs and Feeds Are Managed in Facebook Business Manager
You'll need a Business Manager account to get started. Hopefully you're already using it, but if not, you can sign up here.
This is all rolling out through Facebook Marketing Partners via the API first, then to the Power Editor (within a few weeks). Finally, Facebook says they'll incorporate multi-product ads into other ads interfaces later this year. Interestingly, this is pretty much the opposite of how Google rolls out updates like this; big changes roll out to their tools and software vendors have to scramble to catch up. Facebook's approach seems more partner-friendly.
If you're using self-serve ads, this gives you plenty of time to read up on Product Ads and get prepared for their eventual launch to all marketers.
7. Your Custom Audience Pixel for Facebook PAs is Your Pixel for Website Custom Audiences
Hooray! You don't have to learn something entirely new to feed Facebook the best data to target your ads. The pixel that drives user behavior data to Facebook for your existing Custom Audiences is just modified for use with Product Ads.
Image: Facebook
After setting up your product catalog, product feeds and product sets, setting up this pixel enables the tracking of external events on your product pages.
A standard Custom Audience pixel has three required events you'll need to track: viewed content, additions to cart, and purchases. To use this pixel with your Product Ads, you're also going to have to make the associations between your pixel and your product catalog. You can see a step-by-step guide on how to do that here.
Facebook also offers a downloadable Pixel Helper troubleshooting tool (for Chrome) to help marketers validate their conversion tracking and Custom Audience pixels.
Facebook Product Ads: Get Ready for Social PLAs with Insane Commercial Intent
Facebook is really killing it with ad targeting, thanks to both their Atlas acquisition and their offline purchase data partnerships. Advertisers can now target consumers on Facebook based on their expressed interests and likes, but also their website behavior, app usage, relationship with the business and even purchase history in physical stores.
Giving all of these insights more commercial relevance with these new Product Ads is super smart on Facebook's part and should make their ads a lot more valuable to retailers.
The good news is, SMBs have time to see how the larger advertisers fare with Facebook Product Ads, before they're unleashed on the self-serve platform. We'll bring you more tips and tricks based on their experiences in the coming months.
In the meantime, what do you think of Facebook Product Ads?