Initially, its announcement dropped like a bombshell, as SEOs feared their learned practices for optimising content – bolstering with buzzwords and trending topics – would be rendered obsolete, plummeting engagement and SERP ranking. Twitter users shared GIFs of stock market crashes and pandas smashing up computers, whilst bidding ‘RIP’ to programmatic SEO and niche sites. Others hailed the update as a bold, new frontier for SEO; a much-needed cleanse of SERPs polluted with trash content.

However, since the announcement and initial rollout, the past couple of weeks have been peculiarly quiet, even underwhelming. A recent poll by Aleyda Solis revealed that only 20% of SEOs had noticed any difference to their rankings after the update, with 63% seeing no change whatsoever. Of that 20%, it was a 60/40 split between those who saw the update as having a positive or negative impact, with those voting positive taking the slight majority.

The melodramatic memes have been superseded by perplexed shrugs, as displayed by this tweet likening the update to a half-arsed security guard. Google’s public liaison for search, Danny Sullivan, addressed the disappointment on Twitter, stating, “Update isn’t done. It’s also part of a continuing effort, as we’ve explained. We’ll keep refining how it works”. Google’s search advocate, John Mueller, chipped in, “I’d give it a bit more time”. Sullivan went on to acknowledge the previous hubbub, tweeting:

“I also get that when we announce an update, there are the memes and the gifs and the jokes and the OMG the sky is falling reactions that can even make me laugh. But updates don’t necessarily mean a big giant shift. If you have good content, you’re generally fine…”

So, what does ‘good content’ actually look like? Mercifully, Google has outlined some clear questions for SEOs to ask themselves when checking their content meets the ‘people-first’ approach, including:

• Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
• Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
• After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
• Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

The blog also goes on to list some questions to ask oneself in order to avoid the kind of SEO that this update vows to phase out, including:

• Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
• Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
• Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
• Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
• Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
• Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?

In many ways, this update could be hugely beneficial for both SEOs and performance marketers seeking to cut through the noise and better reach their audience. The ‘quality over quantity’ approach levels the playing field, ensuring that as long as you are delivering authentically to your audience, your ranking will improve. Still, with the past two weeks feeling so anticlimactic, it’s difficult to know what to expect. Is this the calm before the storm, or should we expect a mere drizzle?

The post Google’s ‘Helpful Content’ Update – SEO-pocalypse, or Business as Usual? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

While the energy needed for a single internet search or email is minimal, the number of UK internet users is projected to increase to 88.7% of the country’s population by 2025. Those scraps of energy and the associated greenhouse gasses emitted with each online activity rapidly begin to add up.

While many organisations have made significant progress over recent years in the push to become more eco-friendly, a recent study of marketing professionals by the WFA revealed many gaps remain in brands’ collective journey to a more sustainable future. Climate change and environmental degradation are two of the greatest challenges of modern times, and while we can’t single-handedly change the whole world when it comes to sustainability – we can make sure we manage our own slice of it and start to bring our collective emissions down. As such, even small improvements like following SEO best practices can multiply into real effective change.

How can SEO help the environment?

A solid SEO strategy goes far beyond keywords and links. It means optimising every inch of your online presence so that a website is not only discoverable to users, but also builds trust and credibility – ultimately helping you stand out from competitors. From an environmental standpoint, a good technical SEO strategy means that energy consumption is naturally lowered as it aims to improve page speed by reducing the number and size of assets that need to be loaded. As a result, faster, higher performance websites also have lower bounce rates, meaning a user is less likely to visit another website to complete their intended goal.

These user experience considerations, along with making content findable through a well-thought-out navigation, with no broken links or unnecessary redirects, aims for a fluid customer journey. This fluidity allows users to reach their destination, all while loading the fewest and most energy efficient pages as possible.

Not only is making speed efficiencies the responsible thing to do, but it will help marketing efforts too. With Google’s Core Web Vitals algorithm update starting to roll out, a faster, more energy efficient website has never been more important for organic performance. A faster website is not only beneficial for SEO and customer experience, but can positively impact paid campaigns, as reducing load times have also been shown to boost the quality score of landing pages. One client saw a Cost Per Click (CPC) decrease of 62% for an ad group after a +3 point improvement of the mobile speed score on the campaign landing pages.

The impact of a faster, more efficient website goes way beyond SEO metrics. Over recent years, we’ve seen significant growth in the priority given to corporate social responsibility by companies, as consumers and employees demand businesses take interest in more than just profits. Research shows that sustainability and purpose now drive purchasing decisions, with an IBM survey finding that four in 10 users make their primary purchasing decisions in a purpose-driven way – the same number that are driven by value/cost. Reducing a brands website carbon emissions is a necessary step in sustainability transformation that customers now expect from the brands that they love.

Investment in ECO SEO & measuring its ecological impact

With many speed improvement recommendations often requiring significant investment, sustainability is an additional factor to deploy when convincing non-technical stakeholders of the need for site speed updates. While it might not be a deciding factor of its own, effectively communicating the additional benefits of improved page speed will get attention from other areas of the business. Communicating the impact of your commitment to sustainability is essential to reap the additional benefits – helping improve employer branding as well as both internal and external PR.

When it comes to measurement, up until recently it’s been extremely difficult to measure what the emissions from a particular site might be. While there are now many tools on the market that can estimate these emissions using data sources, including the energy source used by services and traffic volume, this is not yet precise. By taking a more top-level view, we can assess the impact of implementations which we know will make websites more efficient, such as a reduction in the number of server requests.

Building a ‘better web’

Google has long talked about building a ‘better web’ – whether trying to eliminate spam content from ranking in its search results or encouraging businesses to build responsive and secure websites, the focus has usually been on a user’s online experience. Recognising there is a bigger sustainability picture which can be considered by businesses takes our understanding of a ‘better web’ beyond things like speed metrics and which protocol is used.

It might seem like a small step to take in the drive for greater sustainability, but when it comes to reducing the impact of people’s behaviour on the environment, when taken together, lots of small steps can make a dramatic difference. Not only are brands increasingly assessed by customers by their social purposes, but companies are also being weighed in the financial markets by their focuses on Environmental and Social Governance (ESG). These efforts reinforce better actions and responsibilities which can be taken throughout a business when it comes to taking steps towards a better world. 

The post Going Green: Reducing Environmental Impact With SEO appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In other words: the sooner work commences, the faster the results will roll in. Instead of waiting until new products are well established and generating larger search volumes, SEO efforts should be active from the get-go. This lesson is more important than ever, considering that  50% of CMOs aim to enhance company performance by unveiling fresh offerings in existing or new markets this year. 

With future success dependent on early action, a firm grasp of how to use SEO efficiently to target audiences at every stage of the marketing funnel — including the considering, curious and unaware — is paramount. 

Growing pains: what obstacles do marketers face? 

What’s good for a brand is frequently good for SEO. Typically, this phrase refers to powerful and consistent content that wins user attention, drives loyalty, and helps make businesses easily discoverable online. However, there are also notable parallels between fundamental brand challenges and SEO challenges. For instance, checking out the competition for product names is crucial from an SEO perspective, to ensure minimal rivalry for brand keywords and secure robust positioning for more generic terms. 

From an SEO-specific point of view, when launching a new product offering or brand, marketers must carefully navigate several potential issues. In particular: the possibility of confusion around where products sit in the search arena and which categories they fall under, as well as how to produce content that targets every stage of the funnel. All of which means campaigns should drive more than high-speed and blanket exposure. Instead, initiatives need to centre on securing effective reach across multiple types of users, from those already considering your goods or services to those who are simply curious or may be unaware of your offering. 

Hooking users who are primed to buy 

Focusing on users with the highest conversion probability is an obvious priority. So is the first step for SEO strategy, which is to check that the chosen domain name isn’t already in use or too broad to stand a chance of ranking — think “Max Bright” for toothpaste or “All Weathers” for new outdoor gear. Less immediately apparent is the need to look beyond just the product page when selecting keywords for a website, and to understand core requirements, tastes and search behaviours for individuals in the ‘considering’ phase. 

One valuable reference point for gathering this information is in-depth competitor analysis; covering not just products, but also search tactics. By pinpointing the terms rivals are currently targeting to talk about themselves, marketers can obtain a comprehensive understanding of what audiences shopping for products in their vertical are searching for and home in on the most relevant keywords. Meanwhile, assessing competitor rich search results can highlight opportunities to spark purchasing inspiration, by selecting similar terms and topics such as branded knowledge panels, ‘People Also Ask’ boxes, and Featured Snippets. 

Combined with smart keyword research tools that identify areas where marketers can hit the highest iteration volume for specific keyword variations, this will offer the means to own the branded search landscape. Additionally, incoming insights about  keywords with rapidly growing search volume can also be continually mapped to site content and URLs, ensuring user queries are rapidly answered and maximising the likelihood that great experiences will lead to more purchases. 

Harnessing SEO to convert the curious 

Curious audiences are a positive indicator of progress, but custom can’t be guaranteed.  Therefore, after product awareness and traffic begins to climb, it’s vital not to assume that SEO’s job is done. Marketers should set their sights on limiting the risk of lost user attention and sales by streamlining the path from initial interest or curiosity to further exploration of your brand and engagement.

Achieving this requires your search strategy to make it simple and quick for users to access information. Again, a large part of this involves keyword and competitor research. Identifying overlapping products and evaluating their digital footprint — such as associated search suggestions and the search engine results pages (SERPS) they feature in — can give marketers a clear picture of where they should be aiming. Equipped with this knowledge, marketers can ensure that search efforts appear in the right places to reach those intrigued by new products and encourage investigation; not to mention seizing interest and leading them towards your site instead of competitors. 

It’s also worth recognising that curious audiences are at a different juncture in the funnel than considering users, meaning search terms and needs will be different too. As a result, analysing their unique queries and habits is equally as important to collect the insights necessary for refining keyword use, optimising content, and bolstering traffic.

Reaching the unaware before your competitors 

There comes a point in every new product or service journey where driving long-term growth means moving into unknown territory. To keep bringing in fresh prospects, marketers must connect with users who haven’t heard of their brand or offering and aren’t yet browsing for such items. Once more, SEO can help them cut through the online noise.

An integral aspect of attracting wider audiences is, of course, expanding search activities. Seed keywords — including broad terms of one or two words — have a key role to play in enabling marketers to extend their reach, before narrowing back down. For marketers, determining seed keywords related to their brand provides a base they can leverage in conjunction with research tools to isolate and target more detailed, long-tail queries using modifiers. For example, that could entail starting with “ways to de-stress”, building to “running to de-stress”, and finally “size 5 trail running women’s trainers”.

Stepping outside of familiar audiences also requires creative thinking and experimentation. In addition to standard procedures for finding the best opportunities — such as analysing SERPS, autocomplete phrases, and rich results — marketers should tap into a variety of sources including listening tools such as AnswerThePublic, forums and comments sections, to produce more diverse digital content that’s underpinned by a deeper perspective on industry trends, topics and user questions. 

To make the most of SEO, marketers must be realistic about its abilities. While instant floods of traffic are unlikely, it can put new products on track for something that’s more valuable than quick, and often fleeting, volume hits. Marketers must appreciate that a sizable element of long-term product growth is reliant on speedy and multi-faceted SEO activation that not only gets new wares in front of relevant audiences, but also engages users across the buying lifecycle. Ultimately, by developing search strategies to reach the considering, curious and unaware, savvy marketers can build long-lasting relationships, loyalty, and sales.

The post Why Go-To Market Success Depends on Early SEO Action appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Awareness is a cognitive process, and brand awareness is the first step in the process of a customer becoming aware of your brand, meaning it is of paramount importance.

In simple terms, it is the extent to which customers can recall or recognise a brand, whether aided or unaided.

Using big brands such as Coca Cola or McDonalds is an easy way to illustrate this; no matter if somebody has never tried a can of Coke or a Big Mac, they are still likely to know about these large brands. Companies such as these have a huge brand awareness, and are most likely a rather large part of consumer’s lives.

Brand awareness can enable you to cater your product to your audience, embedding it into their everyday lives and habits. It creates trust and association.

How is brand awareness measured?

There are a number of metrics which are used to measure brand awareness. You are likely to have used them yourself if you’re aiming to measure brand health. These are known collectively as Awareness, Attitudes and Usage (AAU) metrics.

These are some examples of AAU metric testing:

• Spontaneous (or unaided) awareness: A measure of how many respondents – expressed in percentage – can quote a brand name without any assistance.

• Prompted (or aided) awareness: The percentage of respondents who claim to have seen a brand or advertisement after being shown stimulus.

Surveys are typically used to measure brand awareness, and are carried out on a sample of consumers, asking about their knowledge of a brand or category.

Customers are not likely to proceed with purchasing a product unless they are aware of a product category and a brand within said category. Brand awareness does not necessarily mean that a consumer will be able to recall a specific name, but they must be able to recall it through distinguishing features.

A consumer’s ability to recall a brand can be a predictor of a brand’s success. Brand awareness is strengthened by associations such as a customer’s evaluation of a brand and their perceived quality of it.

To properly ensure a brand or product’s success, awareness levels must be measured across the entire life-cycle.

Although brand awareness is not a metric that can be specifically measured on a day-to-day basis, this doesn’t mean it isn’t something you’re thinking about regularly.

How can you increase brand awareness?

To ensure brand awareness, a content strategy which focuses on improving customer satisfaction and advertising should be a focus.

Establishing and maintaining a positive relationship with your customers is absolutely key. Ease of use in terms of your products, as well as excellent customer service are obvious ways of doing this.

Storytelling is a less obvious way of doing so. If you have an interesting background or a story behind the setup of your business/product that you think will inspire people – tell them.

Consumers are more likely to engage with and remember brands who are personable and approachable – they want something they can latch onto.

It may be a vague way of determining brand success, but brand awareness is definitely not one to sweep under the rug. It really is quite simple when you think about it, and hopefully the techniques you are already hopeful about implementing will aid you in increasing your brand awareness anyway.

The post WTF is Brand Awareness? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

So what is dwell time?

In simple terms, ‘Dwell Time’ is the actual amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage before returning to the search engine results page (SERP).

It’s important not to get this confused with Bounce Rate, which shows the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page.

Think about yourself for a second. When googling something, you most likely click onto a few different webpages, and after having a quick look at the content, you realise it’s not what you’re looking for, so you hit the return button. The time you spent on the site is the Dwell Time.

It may seem quite simple, but Dwell Time can be difficult to understand. For instance, if a page is very clear and concise, telling readers exactly what they want to know as soon as they click onto it, they may leave the page sooner, thus decreasing the Dwell Time. This means that higher Dwell Time doesn’t automatically mean a page is ‘better’. However, the longer somebody spends viewing your page, the more likely the page satisfied their needs.

It is subjective, meaning SEO experts should take into account the content they are thinking about and whether or not a higher/lower Dwell Time is desired.

What Dwell Time is not

It should also be noted that measuring Dwell Time alone is not an accurate or all-round helpful way of understanding your audience. However, considering this alongside the measures you use already, it could give you the results you’ve been missing.

Dwell Time is not something that can be measured via a third-party tool. It is a metric that only search engines can measure. This doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be considered, however.

Whilst there is no one thing that can be done to increase Dwell Time, it’s pretty easy to think about what will assist in this. For instance, placing key information all the way down a long page is not going to give visitors the quick answers they want. A slow loading time isn’t going to encourage visitors to stay on a site. Considering and implementing these changes could be the key to ensuring visitors stay on your site as long as you would like them to.

Dwell Time is definitely something that should be taken into consideration when trying to analyse engagement. It may seem unimportant as it cannot be viewed as a metric on third-party tools that are commonly used, however, it could be the key to getting visitors to stay on your site, and navigate around it.

The post WTF is Dwell Time? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

The great thing about improving your landing page quality is that it’s usually way easier than improving other marketing aspects, and a little upgrade can go a long way. Think about it this way – a jump from 0.5% conversion rate to a 1% conversion rate doubles your sales. So the question becomes “How can you improve that conversion rate?”

In this article, I’ll list seven examples of effective pages and name some tips and principles that hopefully will enable you to make some strategic adjustments. 

What makes a high-converting landing page? 

How you put together your perfect landing page will depend entirely on your target audience. The page’s CTA (call to action), copy, visual assets, and overall design should be informed by who you want the page to resonate with most. Even though each landing page is unique to the company and its goals, here are some points to keep in mind when designing the page to get the best conversion rate possible:

• Figure out what CTA you want for your landing page. Do you want visitors to learn more about your business, learn more about your product, subscribe to a newsletter, or buy your product? Keep your CTAs clear and limit the amount per page to keep your audience from being confused about why they’re on your site.  Whatever CTA you choose, focus all the page’s content to that end.

• Keep your audience in mind when writing copy. When you work at a company, you have all this background information on your product—your readers don’t. Write to your customer as if they are hearing about your company or product for the first time, and focus on the core problem you’re trying to solve. You can get a little wordy and detailed in the blog, but on the landing page make it highly skimmable and highly digestible. 

• Make sure it has a visual impact. The best landing pages keep the viewer engaged with beautiful and interesting visuals. Attention spans are shorter than ever these days. Photos and videos on your landing page can both entertain and inform your audience, and lend credibility to your brand. 

Now that we’ve gone through some basics, let’s look at some examples of some of the best converting and most effective landing pages I’ve been able to find on the internet. 

1. Airbnb’s Earn Money Hosting page

With copywriting and design, white space is gold. Airbnb’s simple design and layout bring the focus of the page to the content. The CTA is clear, and the copy is easy to follow as you scroll. Write concise headers with short, and punchy paragraphs. Even though the blocks of texts on their page are short, they still convey all the information they need to get the message across. It can be difficult finding the balance between too much and too little writing, but Airbnb shows us here that having lots of short paragraphs is usually smarter than having just a few, big meaty ones. 

2. Drift’s conversational AI page

I can’t overstate the importance of having good reviews and showing off to your customers what reputable names have trusted you with their money. In addition to Drift’s dynamic slightly rebellious branding, their scrolling gallery of logos and reviews does an amazing job of proving to the consumer that they are proud of what they do and they know what they’re doing. Social proof is a big deal to potential customers. If you have high-profile users, show them off! It’s a small world—you could land some more high-profile clients this way. 

3. Bills.com’s debt recommendations 

Sometimes the simplest landing page is the most effective. Landing on Bills.com’s page, you’re forced to use the interactive bar and go through a few simple questions to get to their recommendation. Interactive elements can help your user feel their experience on your site is personalised, and they keep users’ attention far better than just content for reading. To see their debt relief recommendation, you have to put in your contact information. If the viewer gets past this point, you can generate a lot of leads for future email campaigns and retargeting. 

4. Smartcare’s schedule a demo page

 One of my favorite elements on Smartcare’s page is the video. In clear, relatable, and charming terms, their video at the top of the landing page relays the benefits of their product and earns an emotional response. (Adorable children playing will do that to a person.)  Videos on landing pages can be difficult to pull off since mobile-first design causes people to watch shorter videos with no audio or not watch videos at all, but luckily this page’s beautiful design and persuasive bullet points do a good job substituting for the video when they need to. 

5. Moz’ keyword explorer

It’s a challenge for SaaS companies to visually explain what their product is on a landing page. For companies that don’t have a physical product, photos are still vital. Moz does a great job explaining how their software works by using screenshots of their product and how the customer would use it. We usually think of screenshots as being cheap and ineffective compared to featuring professional photography, but this isn’t always the case. There’s something refreshingly authentic about a screenshot, and for products and services that are entirely online, they play an imperative role in explaining what exactly the product is. Giving your users visuals will help them understand your value offering and how it can solve their problem. 

6. Unbounce’s landing page optimisation software

With Unbounce’s expertise in the landing page design space you shouldn’t be surprised that their own landing page is beautifully done. In particular, I love Unbounce’s sticky nav – that bar at the top that follows you as you scroll so that you can click “Start My Free Trial” at any time you like. Sticky navs are a great strategy to make sure your page’s CTA is clear and to remind you why you’re on the page as you scroll. This page’s CTA buttons are large, they stand out really clearly from the background, and they make themselves extremely tempting to click the way that they light up when you hover over them.

7. Flickr stock photos

Great landing pages often have an interesting or thought-provoking headline at the top that entices you to read on and learn more. The landing page is also a great example of how simple design can work in your favor. The screen scrolls through beautiful photos with only two sentences of text and a CTA on the centre of the page. There’s no way for the viewer to get lost and go where they shouldn’t. No distractions, no complexity, just photos and a CTA button. More often than not, simple is best. 

It’s time to convert!

When done right, landing pages can convert viewers to buyers like crazy. To make the most effective landing page you need to find the right balance of copy, visuals, and design that works best for your audience. Make data-driven decisions and test lots of variations to see what hits your audience in just the right way. Researching what’s working for other companies in your industry will prepare you to get as many conversions as possible. 

The post 7 Great Landing Pages and Why They Convert appeared first on PerformanceIN.

To many, it didn’t seem like the best time to start a business.

But the timing actually forced us to focus on building a company that empowers our customers to achieve real and measurable business KPIs within days of signing up as clients. This focus has enabled Creative Clicks to weather the storms brought on by the industry and now COVID-19.

Provide performance value and a competitive advantage

Though this is a no brainer to the PerformanceIN community today, a focus on performance wasn’t obvious 10 years ago. Yet my partners and I realized that as long as we performed for our clients, we’d have a business. Yes, marketing is a creative industry, and we should all strive to provide creative solutions using the best marketing creative, but we must always perform for our clients, delivering results. And we have to continuously test and iterate to ensure that we continue to perform.

But performance isn’t enough. There are a lot of companies providing performance marketing, particularly today. Are you providing real value to your clients? And is this value a competitive advantage? If not, others will copy you and kill your business. That’s why you need to keep your eye on the future to ensure that you can maintain a competitive advantage.

For example, social, e-commerce, streaming entertainment, gaming, food delivery, and grocery apps performed very well during COVID-19, however, these categories have been growing for several years, so as a marketing agency, we had clients in some of these categories already in 2016. We saw the opportunity in 2016 and kept growing. Are you looking for opportunities for 2025?

Diversify

A second guiding principle has been a focus on diversification of offerings and revenue streams. Marketing is a dynamic industry – what performs today might not perform tomorrow, and new platforms and channels will rise, some performing better than others, depending on your product/solution offerings and target audiences.

Therefore, businesses need to diversify to survive a change in the industry, the economy, or a platform/channel. This means diversifying in terms of product/service verticals and geographic locations and targets as well as with the channels and platforms used. The digital marketing industry is full of companies that ultimately closed because they put all of their marketing efforts into one channel or platform, and crashed after a change in the algorithm or policy.

We look at the growth verticals and make sure that we’re working with apps in those categories to ensure that we’ll grow as an agency. In addition to food/grocery deliveries, we also have clients in streaming entertainment, social, e-commerce, and gaming verticals. 

For example, I believe that mobility apps will keep growing because young people today are less interested in owning a car. Of course, apps like Uber suffered during COVID-19, but I still believe in the future of mobility apps which I think will continue to grow in the coming 10 years.

Beyond diversification, marketers are always on the hunt for the newest shiny object, so it’s important to test all of the new offerings to find new performance marketing opportunities. Being an early partner with a new solution will enable giving clients relatively strong KPIs because the platform will be appreciative of the early support you’re providing.

Live the life

One rule which is critical for marketers is to live the life of the products and services you’re marketing. Whether we’re marketing a game, a shopping app, a streaming service or something else, I make sure that the team (and myself included) servicing the business have experienced the app. You need to be able to look the client in the eye (or into the camera today) when you’re making marketing recommendations, and that should also come from extensive personal experience.

Find the opportunity

I know that the saying is ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,’ but why not make Lemon Meringue Pie OR Limoncello?

The point is that even in down markets, there are always opportunities, and it’s your job to find them. Even in the middle of COVID-19, there were a lot of opportunities because of the increase in time spent online and user engagement. Our job was to create marketing programs that enabled our marketing clients to advertise while providing a revenue stream for our publisher partners who suffered from campaign cancellations.

As soon as we saw the impact of COVID-19 and the shift in consumer behavior, we secured specific and exclusive traffic sources suitable for our Social, Video on Demand, and E-commerce clients whom we thought would see an increase in demand. This enabled us to scale up relatively quickly and compensate for the other verticals which were negatively impacted by COVID-19. Furthermore, we expanded our media buying capabilities to take advantage of the changing branding budgets. 

Always have a plan

When news of COVID-19 grew in January, we created an action plan at Creative Clicks with various scenarios. It’s important for all businesses to always have a plan, even in good times, and to always be looking ahead for any potential market changes or corrections.

Because digital marketing is a dynamic industry, the only guaranteed constant is change. That’s why it’s important to run your business as if there is always a crisis around the corner — because there probably is.

The post Always Have a Plan in Case of a Crisis appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Native ads differ from traditional advertising formats. Along with being used to promote ‘typical’ product or service pages, native ads prove effective for the distribution of top and mid-funnel content. It means that you can leverage native advertising for almost any marketing goal you set. Here come a few questions: 

• How do you pick the right content for brand awareness, lead generation, and sales-oriented campaigns? 
• When is it a good idea to promote blog posts or other informative content with native ads?

What’s your goal?

As has already been mentioned, you can set different goals for your native advertising campaigns. Whether you aim at building brand awareness or strengthening customer loyalty, you’ll achieve your objectives fast with a quality campaign. 

Moreover, depending on your goals, you’ll be targeting different audience segments. With this in mind, let’s move on to identifying what your landing page should include when you target either of the following objectives:

• Build brand awareness;
• Generate leads;
• Drive sales;
• Nurture your customers.

Build brand awareness 

What do campaigns aimed at building brand awareness include and why actually run them?

Native ads are often displayed next to editorial articles on publishers’ websites, and readers are more likely to click on them when these ads offer useful information, news, or entertaining content. Distributing these types of content by doing native advertising, you reach the widest possible audience that may later become your leads and customers.

It’s also worth noting that attracting lots of visitors isn’t enough for a brand awareness campaign. While trying to maximize your reach, you should remember that your message needs to be relevant to your product or service. 

So what are the most effective landing pages types for boosting your brand awareness?

Stories

Storytelling is a powerful approach that can increase both brand awareness and authority.

By sharing stories that evoke emotions, you can build positive brand perception. Tell your customers’ stories, take your audience behind the scenes, share employee success stories – these types of content form a personal connection between your prospecting customers and your brand. 

‘How-to’ guides

Use your native ad campaigns to educate your audience. 

Do you sell kitchenware? Create and distribute homemade recipes. Does your company offer a fitness app? Share 10 best exercises to do at home. Even if your campaign clickers don’t need a dinner set or a personal training program, they’ll think about your company first when they do need it.

Statistics

Readers love numbers and statistics. 

The topic ‘8 Out of 10 businesses fail within the first 18 months. Here’s why’ is similar to simple ‘How to avoid business failure,’ but these two will cause different reactions. The first title denotes you have insights into the subject, while the second one is just another vague guide from a little-known company. 

If you have studies you conducted for marketing purposes, include them in your native advertising campaigns.

Quizzes and gamification

Anything that encourages users to interact with your brand will work. 

Personality quizzes, knowledge tests, shopping quizzes – whatever type you choose, you can be sure it will drive better engagement than a typical blog post would do. 

Seasonal content

Are holidays coming up soon? Use this to your advantage. 

Content themed around a particular season or event is extremely effective for capturing your buyers’ attention. Even if your products don’t fall under the category of holiday shopping, try to find ways your offering can be relevant to the topic.

Lists

Lots of native advertising examples include list posts. People love them. These articles provide them with a pile of ideas rather than educational content. Seeing a post called ‘30+ Hometown vacation ideas,’ readers understand they can get quite a few great ideas by quickly scanning it.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of content types that might work for your brand awareness campaigns, but it’s a great place to start. Regardless of what your campaign content offers, remember that it should encourage readers to keep navigating your website. So, before launching your next brand awareness campaign, make sure your landing page has a clear structure and includes elements that make your visitors stay on your site as long as possible.

Lead Generation

Lead generation campaigns have a key purpose: to capture users’ contact information so that you can send them your marketing and sales materials. To get leads online, you need a lead magnet. 

A lead magnet is an incentive that you offer to your potential customers in exchange for their contact details.

What types of lead magnets can you choose for your lead generation native advertising campaign? 

Free services

Offer free consultation or product trial for any user who fills in the form on your landing page and leaves their contact.

Cheat sheets and checklists

Who doesn’t like easy-to-implement action plans? Just like list posts, cheat sheets and checklists are popular due to their simplicity and functionality. 

Ebooks

Ebooks are one of the best content types for collecting lead information. Visitors can see what’s inside only after they provide their contact information. 

Moreover, your ebook is a way to establish yourself as an industry expert. Develop an insightful guide, you showcase your expertise and have greater chances to turn these leads into your customers. 

Giveaways

Getting leads from a giveaway is an effective tactic, but remember that you want to reach the widest possible number of prospective customers, not just participants. Keep this in mind when coming up with the idea of your giveaway and defining targeting options.

Discounts

Personalized coupons, first-time shopper offers – these are lead magnets that can work well when you retarget your website visitors. Landing pages that offer discounts allow you to both push your potential customers to purchase decisions and capture their contacts for further marketing.

Sales 

If your campaign is aimed at driving sales, your landing page should convey this clearly.

Unlike brand awareness or lead generation campaigns where you can promote various types of landing pages, here you have one option – promote a page that tells about your product or service. That’s why instead of listing different content ideas, we’ll highlight critical elements that distinguish high-converting landing pages from less effective ones.

Social proof

The first and most important factor that affects your landing page effectiveness is detailed testimonials. You might omit product descriptions, FAQ sections, chatbots, but if you have lots of detailed testimonials that prove the quality of what you’re offering, your page is already persuasive enough.

Clear offer

Make sure that your offer is clear from looking at your headline. Denote benefits and key features in your subheadings – people usually scan pages and rarely pay attention to long-form texts before they decide they’re worth attention. 

Easy to take action

Nothing should distract your campaign clickers from taking an action. Resolve all the possible issues before your visitors even think about them and make them focus on your offer. 

On the page below, we see a typical e-commerce product page: visitors can see product description, select its color and form, and buy it, without scrolling the page and looking for more details or a CTA.

Nurture customers

If you want to keep your customers coming back, don’t forget to nurture them after they make a purchase.

Re-engage with your customers by staying in front of them, providing relevant and timely content, and offering them exceptional benefits for being loyal to your brand. A well-crafted retargeting campaign makes this possible. All you need is compelling content (and obviously, a proper tracking setup). 

Many content types that work for brand awareness or lead generation campaigns can be effectively used for your post-purchase campaigns as well. Mind that we say ‘content types’ and not ‘content itself,’ meaning that the ebook you created for capturing leads might not be applicable to people that have already made a purchase. But you can develop a more advanced ebook to further educate and nurture your customers.

Here are a few more ideas you might want to consider for your customer retention campaigns:

Related products

Now when you know the categories your customers are interested in, you can retarget them with more relevant offers. Use the insights you’ve got to create a list of product suggestions based on their past shopping activity.

New product releases

New product releases are a great way to retain customers.

In order to keep customers returning, give them a reason to do that. Promote new product releases or even offer the most loyal customers the chance to get a discount on new arrivals.

Subscriptions

Can you lock your customers with a subscription-based business model?

Give shoppers the chance to pay for a recurring product delivery that occurs regularly (weekly, bi-weekly, or whenever you choose) and promote your offer with a retargeting campaign.

Summing up

Your native advertising campaign setup, such as audience segmenting and bidding strategy, determines whether you reach the right people and how much it costs to you. But it all won’t matter without quality landing pages. 

The post Selecting the Right Landing Pages for Your Native Advertising Campaigns appeared first on PerformanceIN.

How can I prepare my brand to work with content sites?

Brand awareness and size

Generally speaking, content sites are looking to work with brands that have established their marketing touchpoints and have built a recognisable brand through the use of those touchpoints. The marketing rule of seven touchpoints to conversion continues to reign as king, meaning if a brand has existing digital content that is driving consumers through the buyers’ funnel, content sites are more likely to agree to a partnership. This is important because it increases the probability of a consumer landing on the content partner’s article. To ensure a content partnership fits seamlessly within the conversion funnel, marketers may provide the partner with a promotion to include within the article, enticing the consumer to continue moving towards a purchase.

Promotions

If a marketer is new to the affiliate marketing space and doesn’t offer promotions to partners, the likelihood of content sites wanting to write about that brand become slim to none. Content sites need a call to action, and promotions or discounts typically prove to be the best at converting. Therefore, it is highly recommended that brands who are interested in working with content sites provide promotions to offer their readers. In doing so, it draws in greater traffic for the  partner, attracts the consumer, and helps to drive a higher ROI for the marketer.

Commission thresholds

When looking to onboard content partners, marketers should anticipate the need for flexibility with their commission rates, both on a Cost per Action (CPA) and revshare model. As a general rule of thumb, content sites typically request higher commission rates than mid and lower-funnel partners; this is largely due to the fact that upper-funnel partners are less likely to receive last-click attribution, so a higher commission compensates for potentially not being paid out on the sale, in addition to the level of effort that goes into writing specific branded content. If a brand is not willing to be flexible with commission thresholds, content sites will likely go elsewhere. 

Consumer reviews

Content sites will often consider a brand’s online presence and consumer reviews prior to considering a partnership. Sources such as Trustpilot and Better Business Bureau are crucial to the health of a brand’s online reviews; if sites such as these are touting negative reviews of a brand, content sites will usually avoid that partnership. However, even if a brand’s reviews aren’t exactly stellar, that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. 

If a brand is new to the space or needs to boost existing ratings, partnering with review sites like Trustpilot and others can work with brands to create a strategy to increase their ratings. Doing well by consumers generally drives ratings to be positive but it’s imperative for brands to be proactive when it comes to reviews. By establishing regular outreach to consumers post-purchase, brands have the opportunity to catch and remedy poor user experiences before they become negative reviews. 

Content calendar

Promotional or content calendars are a great way for marketers to entice content partners to write about their brand. By providing the partner with something fresh and newsworthy to write about up-front, marketers remove an extra layer of work for the partner, giving them a leg up on competitors who may not have prepared as thoroughly. Whether it’s a new collaboration, an exciting product launch, or seasonal promotions, content partners appreciate this level of visibility and being able to plan their editorial calendars accordingly. 

Why content partnerships are only a piece of a successful marketing strategy

Content partners largely serve the purpose of increasing brand awareness and driving consumers into the buyer’s funnel because traditional affiliate programs typically run on a last-click attribution model. However, depending on a marketer’s goals, there are additional attribution models that can be implemented to partner more heavily with content sites. If a marketer is solely working with content partners on a last-click model, the likelihood of their consumers converting is exponentially lower than a marketer who utilises a holistic approach to performance marketing. It’s a misconception of many marketers that working with content sites will lead directly to customer conversions.

Integrating a full-funnel strategy is essential to driving consumers to convert on a brand’s product or service. By employing mid and lower-funnel partners, such as coupon and loyalty sites, in addition to upper-funnel partners, consumers remain engaged throughout the entire buyers’ journey.

Upper-funnel partnerships like content sites are only the first step in creating a full-funnel performance strategy. By implementing a full-funnel strategy, marketers can put themselves and their affiliate programs in a much stronger position for success.

Looking to get involved with content partners? Reach out to Perform[cb] Agency now to get started!

The post How to Work with Content Sites in Affiliate Marketing appeared first on PerformanceIN.

What we don’t talk about enough, though, is the risk of continuing to slog away at longer-term, mature campaigns without a long-term strategy. Of ending up in a rut, spinning your wheels only to see your brand get left behind, whether that’s in a single big drop after a core update or a slower long-term slide into irrelevance. 

To manage that risk, SEO’s need to be constantly reviewing, challenging and elevating their strategies. SEO has the potential to be far more than a list of increasingly nit-picky technical tweaks. Done right, it should be at the heart of your long-term digital strategy, helping future-proof your brand both inside and outside of the SERPs. 

The SEO Treadmill: Knowing when to stop

The early stages of an SEO campaign are often the most exciting. Taking advantage of big technical and content wins can lead to big jumps in visibility, with hockey-stick performance graphs and the bragging rights to go with them.

Unfortunately, those big wins tend to be all too finite. Managing SEO campaigns long-term can be trickier, with fewer quick rewards, less glamour and a lot more legwork. You’ll quickly move down the cost-benefit hierarchy, from big sweeping changes to rote tasks generating lower returns and requiring higher levels of investment. 

You could also start to worry about losing what you’ve built. With search engines changing constantly, performance is never guaranteed, no matter how long-established or successful your campaign. Big changes start to seem riskier, and you can never be sure whether the work you’re doing is having no impact, or if it’s stopping performance from going into decline. 

It’s easy to waste vast amounts of time and money by unwittingly slipping into this sort of “treadmill mode” on your campaigns – churning the same blog content strategy, conducting the same tired outreach campaigns, and making ever-more-trivial tweaks to your image alt text in the hope that if you just do it long enough, it’ll all work out. 

This inevitable slide from short-term wins to long-term slog not only tanks your SEO campaign’s ROI – it puts your brand at risk of being outpaced by competitors and left behind.  

Doing well? It’s probably time to change your strategy

If you’re getting too comfortable with your SEO campaign, that’s a dangerous place to be. If you’re relying on tired old tactics or getting lazy in your execution (and by definition, doing well enough that this isn’t a huge problem right now), you’re putting yourself at serious risk of having the world move on without you. 

It can be difficult to know when you’ve reached a tipping point where staying on the same path is no longer productive. Your team might not be forthcoming with that information either – if your agency has come to rely on your retainer investment, they’re unlikely to be the ones saying “this is getting a bit pointless now, guys” as they deliver their 42^nd identical monthly activity report.  

However, if growth has slowed and new ideas are getting thin on the ground, it could mean the time is ripe for challenging some long-held assumptions and asking some difficult questions. For example:

Stop looking at the letter and focus on the spirit

Of the many outdated narratives the SEO industry should really have jettisoned by now, by far the worst is the idea of “cracking the algorithm”. 

In truth, machine learning means that there isn’t really some secret code to unravel anymore, at least not in a sense that we’d ever be capable of understanding. 

If you’re focused on codifying SEO to the Nth degree, it’s easy to end up in a cycle of pointless activity for activity’s sake. This sort of thinking can also lead to over-reliance on loopholes or exploitative tactics, and this can be exactly what gets you into trouble when Google does inevitably catch up with you. 

While there might not be hard and fast answers, there are a lot of very good, common-sense guidelines on how to make websites more accessible to search engines and more attractive to users. Instead of scouring the internet for the latest SEO acronym that’s going to fix everything for you, ask difficult questions instead. 

Is my site still relevant? Does it really – hand on heart – deliver value for the search intent of the keywords I’m targeting, or am I just shoehorning keywords in for the sake of it? If my site wasn’t indexed anymore, would anybody really care? If not, how do I change that?

These questions are harder to answer (and will definitely take more soul-searching) than most SEO audit templates. However, taking action on the really big questions is likely to have far more impact on your future SEO visibility than jumping blindly onto the next jargon-fuelled bandwagon.  

Apply SEO Insights to other channels (not just PPC)

Search is like no other marketing channel. It’s unique in that users actively request answers and information, interacting with brands rather than simply having them interrupt their day. 

This makes for great conversion rates (provided you have a thorough understanding of search intent), but it also gives you a direct understanding of your potential customers’ needs, wants and worries. 

Search is an opportunity to build a personal connection with stressed-out, advertising-blind customers in a way that’s increasingly difficult via other channels. If you don’t believe me, just look through your own search history for the past couple of weeks – it’s sometimes frightening how much of our lives is laid bare through the search bar. 

While few people underestimate the value of search as a marketing channel, it’s easy to miss out on the potential benefits of search insight across a whole range of other areas of your business. 

Search can tell you whether your niche is on an upward curve and likely to see an influx of competitors, or whether it’s contracting and you might need to pivot.

It can tell you whether you’re speaking your customers’ language, or whether you’re starting to sound outdated. 

Search data could be the inspiration for your next product offering or your next marketplace disruption. If you’re only using it to decide your next blog post title, you’re missing out. 

Reduce your reliance on SEO

While it might seem trite, reducing your reliance on SEO is about more than just dividing your business’ eggs into more baskets. Ironically enough, the less you need search engines, the more likely it is that you’re the sort of business they’d want to include in their listings. 

I forget exactly who originally said it, and I’m probably paraphrasing it horribly, but a quote that’s always stayed with me goes something like this:

“Be the result that Google would be embarrassed not to show.”

If you’ve got a strong brand, a loyal customer base, and a consistently high level of users searching for you by name, you’re probably doing all the things that Google would want to see from a high-performing search result. If, on the other hand, you’re not offering anything beyond being first in the rankings, you’re at considerably higher risk.

“The spirit, not the letter” comes back into play here. 

While it’s probably going to be regarded as some form of SEO agency treason, here’s an idea: if your SEO budget isn’t generating a noticeable level of ROI, stop investing and put that money into something more fundamental instead. 

Not everybody needs to be investing thousands into SEO month on month to no end, and much as we’d like to believe otherwise, the SEO industry doesn’t always have the answers. I’d much rather see my clients pause or stop SEO campaigns to focus on bigger developments to their proposition or user experience than keep churning out rote SEO tasks to try and maintain an increasingly precarious position in the rankings.

Focus on what matters

In these times more than any other, it’s clear that change and instability is a fact of life. This is true for SEO too, and while losing visibility is a worrying prospect, the truth is that it’s impossible to prepare for every eventuality.

We’ve never really spent too much time tracking specific Google updates at Cameo Digital. Instead, we’ve always focussed on doing what seemed most in line with the spirit of what Google was trying to achieve, and it’s mostly paid off.

While there’ll always be idiosyncrasies that need specialist SEO knowledge (the need for a technically well-optimised site will probably never go away), good SEO is less about chasing the algorithm than its ever been.   

While this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared, it does mean we need to tread a fine line between hedging against potential losses and actually making gains. Continuing to run bloated, low impact SEO strategies might be helping you to maintain your rankings and prevent decline, but there’s always the possibility that money could be spent on something more impactful. 

Continually understanding, developing and proving your value to your customers is the best way of ensuring a future for your business, and understanding SEO is a great way of doing this. 

The post Getting off the Treadmill: Why SEO Can No Longer Exist in a Vacuum appeared first on PerformanceIN.