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Growth Hacks:
Stop Wasting Google AdWords Dollars!
Over the last three years, Disruptive Advertising analyzed hundreds of millions of dollars of Google Adwords ad spend (~100 billion impressions).
Here are the golden nuggets that they uncovered:
1. 61% of budgets were spent on search terms that never converted (= wasted).
2. There’s only a 1.2% chance (almost no chance) that improving your ad copy or landing pages will improve your CPC if your ad spend is being wasted on the wrong search terms.
3. Every 10% increase in wasted ad spend increases your cost-per-conversion (CPC) by 44-72%. That means if you stop wasting your money on the wrong search terms (61%), you can decrease your CPC by 264%-432%!
In the past, people doing SEO would try to grab exact match domain names to the keyword, like “newyorkplumber.com”. This method became less effective in recent years and is not implemented much anymore.
But those days are over! According to a study by ahrefs.com, the HIGHEST correlating factor for websites that rank in the top of google are exact match domains! Go figure!
It’s one thing to launch a Facebook advertising campaign; it’s another to optimize it for success. This is a platform with an audience that surpassed 2 billion monthly active users as of June 2017. Whether you look to a Facebook marketing agency for assistance or try to go it alone, you can’t just put a Facebook ad out there and hope for the best. No, you need to focus on a specific group of people that show the most interest in your product or service. These are the ones most likely to convert to paying customers.
Thankfully, advertising on Facebook is such a popular strategy because of the incredible audience targeting options available to marketers. By honing in on users that fall into groups ranging from Parents with preteens to those that have Used a travel app, social media marketers can become uber-specific in terms of to whom their ads appear and how. However, understanding which features of audience targeting to use and how best to use them is often easier said than done.
Don’t just take a shot in the dark with your Facebook marketing. Understand how to optimize your Facebook ad targeting and you can unlock the secret to 4.53X greater ROI and a 70% lower CPC.
The best audience to begin targeting are those that have already showed an interest in your brand in some manner. These low-hanging fruit could result from having signed up for your newsletter, taken action on a form shared on Facebook, or done any one of a slew of other activities.
Once you’ve decided the action that prompts the ad to appear, you can set up a three-prong Custom Audience. This includes:
Website Custom Audience
Customer File Custom Audience
Engagement on Facebook Custom Audience
Website Custom Audience
So let’s say you’re targeting people that signed up for your newsletter. When they sign up, they should be taken to a landing page confirming that they’ve registered. Using Website Custom Audience on Facebook, just input that URL after setting the Website Traffic option to “People who visit specific web pages”.
In order to set up a Customer File Customer Audience using the same newsletter example, you can upload a CSV or other file that contains all of your subscribers’ emails. This option includes the ability to sync with a third-party ESP, keeping everything as accurate and up-to-date as possible.
Given that people don’t always sing up with their true email, this option should always be used in conjunction with another Custom Audience method.
Engagement on Facebook Custom Audience
Finally, to target those that took action on something on your Facebook page (e.g. a post with a CTA to sign up for your newsletter), set up an Engagement Custom Audience. You can choose to target those that interacted with a video ad, lead advert, Canvas, or a post on your page.
Using all three of these Custom Audiences means you’re able to maximize the efficacy of your Facebook ad targeting. You’re still focusing on a specific audience based on an action they’ve taken (showing interest in your brand). However, you’re utilizing every tool at your disposal for reaching them.
Use Flex Targeting
In October 2015, Facebook launched a new feature for their audience targeting that introduced the ability to exclude or incorporate additional interests, behaviors, or demographics. Basically, this allows Facebook marketing to get a whole lot more specific.
Using the “Must Also Match” option of this feature has been shown to increase conversions up to 25%. It allows you to target people with shared, though not exactly the same, interests.
In this example, someone interested in basketball will be targeted with the same Facebook advertisement as those interested in volleyball. For a sports apparel company launching a new line of indoor sneakers, these would be useful audiences to target. People with an interest in not just one, but two sports that require the shoes are more motivated buyers.
Refine Based on Amount of Time Engaged
This rule applies to two circumstances, in particular: Time spent on your website and time spent engaged with a video.
Set up the targeting for the amount of time someone spends on your website. To do so, you’ll need to create a Website Custom Audience. Then, select the appropriate option from the dropdown menu. Unless your site experiences a truly massive amount of traffic, it’s wise to start by targeting the top 25%. You’ll still get a more engaged group to market on Facebook to, and the volume will remain high enough.
Once you decide to launch a Facebook video ad campaign, it’s important to get it in front of the right people. Target people based on their duration of time engaged with your Facebook video ad. You can set this up as an Engagement Custom Audience.
One of the options within this is Video. From there you can designate what percentage of the video a person must have watched to be targeted by your Facebook ad. The shorter the video, the higher the percentage of video completion you should select.
People that are more comfortable and familiar with digital technology will have an easier time converting. The process of clicking through a Facebook advertisement and purchasing a product doesn’t seem daunting to those used to the action. However, it can easily deter those that are not.
To avoid this, set up your Custom Audience Behaviors to exclude those that are less likely to convert. This is even easier with the introduction of exclusionary behaviors tool. It allows you to select what characteristics are a dealbreaker.
Source: https://www.radon-media.com/blog/facebooks-detailed-targeting-theres-something-new-and-interesting/
Some suggestions for behaviors to exclude when marketing on Facebook include those with a 2G mobile network connection and people using Internet Explorer as their browser.
In just the same vein, include people whose behaviors demonstrate digital aptitude. This is especially useful if your product or service requires a deeper understanding of technology. These audiences could include Early Technology Adopters, people using an iOS operating system, and those with a 4G connection.
For all of the above tips to be successful, one of the most important things to remember with Facebook ad targeting is segmentation. Either split test on your own or hire a Facebook advertising agency to help out with this. Segmentation is crucial to test strategies and see what yields the best results, There are so many options when it comes to Facebook ad audience targeting. it’s in your best interest to try out different tools and change one aspect at a time to see what works best for your business.
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Growth Hacks:
Leverage the Secrets of Netflix:
Netflix has 81 million subscribers, and they keep close tabs on all of us. Netflix recently published what they learned when they experimented with the best images to use to get people to watch new content:
1. They tested variations of the main image used to promote the latest series of ‘The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’. The winning image was the one with 2 faces expressing astonishment.
2. Using images of villainous characters worked better than those that highlighted the hero.
3. Netflix also found that images that contain more than three people lead to a significant drop in user engagement.
Wista analyzed millions of videos that contain “Calls to Action” for viewers to buy or signup. This is what they found:
– CTAs at the end of the video don’t perform as well as CTAs in the start or middle. More people are watching and they get sold faster than you think! +350% improvement.
– Image CTAs outperform Text by 30%.
-Videos with CTA that included the word:
+ “Free” converted 12.22%
+ “You”: 9.6%
+ “Signup”: 19.5%
They’re far cheaper than traditional advertising methods: It takes on average of $20 to reach 1,000 people through a magazine ad; Facebook advertising costs $0.25 to reach the same size audience.
The array of tools Facebook offers within its Power Editor platform allows for hyper-targeting. The more effectively you’re reaching customers, the better your ROI on an ad campaign.
Lead generation is both more effective and easier using Facebook’s Lookalike Audience feature.
Create a Website Custom Audience
The Custom Audience tools provided by Facebook are some of the most effective and easy-to-use available.
They allow advertisers to hone in on an audience based on demographics, behavior, etc.
One of these such behaviors includes visiting your website.
The Custom Audience from Your Website Facebook advertising feature lets you target people that have visited or taken another form of action on your website.
Source: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
What this translates to is best provided in an example.
Let’s say you are an ecommerce brand that sells handbags.
You have a blog post on your site that’s a guide on how to pick the right handbag for any occasion.
If you set up Website Custom Audience, anyone who is viewing that post can then be directed to your Facebook.
Now, they will not just see your Facebook profile page; they can instead see a related post with each of your handbag’s listed and a CTA direct-to-buy.
It’s another opportunity for converting people that didn’t otherwise do so when visiting your site by providing them with more compelling, targeted content.
Test, Test, then Test Your Facebook Ad Again
Split testing your Facebook ads is the key to identifying the highest-performing keywords.
It’s also the best strategy in Facebook marketing for identifying what’s working and fixing what’s not in order to optimize your campaign.
Structure your Facebook advertising campaign so that you have one ad running below each overarching ad set.
Between these ads, change one detail so that you can easily identify the feature that is succeeding or failing.
This also makes it easier to turn off a set that’s not performing well.
Source: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Facebook makes setting up a split campaign as simple as possible: Just check the box under the Conversions page of your Ads Manager.
Source: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Success is calculated by tracking the ads with the lowest CPC and highest CTR.
Those that are performing well in these measurements are the ones you should look to for the features that are working: Keywords, visuals, etc.
Analyze Your Audience Insights
At your disposal when marketing on Facebook is detailed audience insights.
These allow you to better understand your customer’s behavior, demographics, preferences, and more.
This tool is especially helpful for narrowing down an otherwise broad audience.
For example, if your company sells running shoes and you’re thinking of targeting people with the interest “running”, that vague term will yield an audience size in the millions.
Instead, you can use the Facebook Audience Insights tool.
This will find related search terms to more specifically target a relevant consumer base.
Source: https://www.agorapulse.com
Once you’ve entered the Audience Insights tool in Ads Manager, you can select the type of audience to monitor and observe.
You can then select from a whole list of interests, demographics, and behaviors to further refine the audience and yield more specific results.
Source: https://www.agorapulse.com
From here, you can toggle through demographics, location, and more to get a deeper understanding of your audience.
Doing so will allow you to create more effective Facebook ads that are more compelling in converting a user into a customer.
Source: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Make Your Facebook Advertisement Specific
Whatever CTA your Facebook ad utilizes, make sure its directing people to something more specific than just your homepage.
Whether it’s a blog post or landing page, getting users to a more detailed part of your company means a greater chance for lead generation and conversion.
Meanwhile, 11% are making the fatal mistake of taking users to their homepage.
Even staying within Facebook is a missed opportunity that 20% of advertisers are falling victim to.
Source: https://winningwp.com
Take full advantage of directing users to a specific landing page by using tools that optimize it for conversions.
SumoMe’s Welcome Mat does just that by creating a landing page that encourages conversions through a full-screen CTA.
Getting your Facebook advertising strategy right is a combination of factors.
You can optimize your campaign for best possible results by combining your own research with that of an experienced Facebook advertising agency.
When approached the right way, Facebook advertising is the most affordable and effective advertising solution for businesses to target and reach more consumers.
In the end, an optimized Facebook ad campaign can yield substantial ROI.
It can also be the basis of a company’s marketing strategy that drives growth forward.
This is an all-too-common situation: You pour your heart and soul into writing a grade-A piece of engaging content that follows every best practice in the business, but it fails to gain the traction you had hoped.
Over 90% of organizations incorporating content marketing into their business strategy.
It’s no surprise that standing out from the crowd and getting attention can be a difficult task.
60% of B2B content marketers admit that they’re top challenge is creating engaging content.
57% have difficulty measuring the effectiveness of their content.
The secret to content marketing success is actually less about the quality of the content (which, don’t get us wrong, still matters), and more about promoting it appropriately.
Take it from the folks over at Kraft Foods: Content marketing is valuable.
So valuable, in fact, that they earned 4X greater ROI on their content marketing than their targeted advertising.
Here are some content marketing tools and tips for getting your article out there to the people who matter, and getting those views (and that ROI) you deserve.
Use BuzzSumo to Find Influencers
Whatever the topic of your article, use a content marketing platform to find influential sites that have related content. They’d likely be willing to help you share what you wrote.
Once you scrape a list of these various blogs and publications, you can reach out to them via an email template and begin your link building.
BuzzSumo is the best content marketing tool out there for initially finding and contacting influencers.
By searching the title, topics, and/or related keywords, you can select the sites that have similar content with the most shares.
You’re looking for impactful places to promote your article, which is why you need to be selective with these results.
If any of the results are your own domain, don’t bother with those.
Instead, expand the “View Sharers” option next to a result and gather the contact information of those people who appear.
Though the only contact info you’ll have is their Twitter handle, investigate their website for an email address.
When it’s all said and done, you should compile a list of at least five email addresses.
Draft an email template to send to each person on your list in which you mention that you have an article similar to what they’ve published on their site.
Then ask them if they’re willing to link to your content by providing a value proposition.
This can be as generic as, “Considering you wrote about [topic of content], I thought you might be interested in [the content you wrote]. It can give your audience even more tips and suggestions that they would find valuable.”
Incorporate Quotes from Experts
Influencers are not only people to reach out for backlinks, they are also excellent sources of content for your article.
Even better, they will feel more compelled to share the finished piece with their audience.
Using a content marketing platform like Klout is great for this. Enter the topic of your article into the search bar and the results will yield a list of experts for you to contact.
Once you click on one of these experts, you can see all of their social media accounts. By digging through these and their website, you’ll likely be able to pull an email from which to contact them.
In your email, let them know what you’re writing about and ask them to provide a quote as the experts in this field/topic.
Be sure to mention that you’ll send them the finished piece of content, and that it would be great for them to then share it with their followers.
Leave a Response With a Link
On the various forums across the web, you can find a large audience of people interested in the topic of your content.
Simply by entering into these sites, searching for your topic, and choosing wisely from one of the questions listed to respond to can draw people to your article.
One of the most popular forums out there to begin your search is Quora.
Start by searching by topic for the subject that pertains to your article. Then look for results with a high follower and question count.
Within these results, you’re looking for answers that have a high upvote count.
Once you’ve found it, you just need to add an answer with a link to your content.
Make this response in-depth and related to the question being asked.
Your goal from this content marketing strategy is to stand out from the rest of the crowd on Quora answering this question. This makes it more compelling to click your link.
Note: The above image is just a portion of the response. To see it in full, click here.
When it all comes down to it, promoting your content to the right people through backlinks and sharing is the key to achieving views.
Yeah, you want to make sure the content is good quality and puts forth the right view of your brand.
It’s also about reaching the right people and spreading the word.
The above tips will help improve your professional content marketing by more effectively getting your content where it counts: In front of potential customers.
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Growth Hacks:
“Oops Sorry!” Got Us a 300% Increase in Response Rate:
The Taktical Digital team make a mistake once (a rare occurrence) in an outreach email where we used the wrong information. We quickly sent a second “Oops sorry!” email.
The result? 3X the Responses!
Use your “Oops” wisely:
– Use normal language, not “marketing speak.”
– Apologies once, tell a joke.
– Every Oops is a conversion opportunity; extend extra incentive.
– Double check, don’t Oops twice.
Your recipient looks to your subject line to decide whether they will open your email. In fact, a study by Chadwick Martin Bailey found that 64% of people open an email solely on the basis of the subject line. This means that a subject line is an opportunity to get your foot in the door. It doesn’t matter if you have an established relationship with the person or not. Of course, this comes with an expectation.
Growbots studied thousands of emails and found this to be the best subject line:
After launching a Facebook marketing campaign, it’s tempting to sit back and watch what happens.
Instead, there are always areas for improving and optimizing.
Facebook marketing can:
-Drive traffic to your website -Spread brand awareness -Increase ROI through click-to-buy conversions
Regardless of your goal, there’s an arsenal of tools and strategies at your disposal for maximizing the results from marketing on Facebook. Even better, many of these are completely free. What it yields is anything but zero profit, though.
Done right, effective Facebook ads can bring in over 80,000 leads at just a fraction of the cost of other advertising methods.
Why You Need Facebook Marketing Tools
Facebook is an essential piece of any digital marketing strategy.
That being said, competition is the biggest obstacle to contend with in the course of creating, launching, and optimizing a Facebook marketing campaign.
To put it into perspective, here’s what the contest for influence on the social media platform looks like:
In early 2017, there were 65 million Business Pages, and 4 million of these advertised directly with Facebook.
Average CTR for Facebook ads across all industries is 0.9%.
89% of small business owners claim Facebook helps promote their business in conjunction with their Weebly site.
93% of social media marketers used Facebook in 2016, with 55% of marketers claiming it’s their most important platform.
Hosting a contest or promotion through your Facebook Timeline is an excellent way to boost brand awareness and user engagement.
You don’t have to give away anything big, but keep in mind that the prize should be incentive enough for people to participate.
Software like Jotform Quiz Maker or Agorapulse lets you run a sweepstakes, quiz, or photo contest right from your Facebook page.
The tool lets you customize the contest, from which posts to to run the promotion on to how users interact with it. Then you can track comments and results.
It’s a simple yet more effective way to launch and monitor a Facebook contest. Using Facebook contests has been a source of success for many brands.
Diamond Candle, for example, ran a sweepstakes that required users to Like their page and submit their email. All of these people entered for a chance to win their own products.
While keeping costs low thanks to the prize at stake, they succeeded in accumulating over 30,000 new Likes in under six weeks.
Use Video
Video marketing campaigns on Facebook have gained immense traction.
A recent Adobe publication revealed that purchase intent increases 1.8 times for video viewers versus non-viewers.
Meanwhile, an Animoto study proved that 4 times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.
Free video editing software can help you create a professional-looking video and engage an audience right from the start. Stupeflix does much of the work for you, leaving you to select a theme and input the video, text, and music.
Optimize Your Headline
Getting the right headline is more than just a trick to attract views. This piece of content can also impact your brand’s SEO and promote conversions.
Studies indicate that a headline between 12-14 words achieves the most Likes on Facebook.
Tools like Headline Analyzer takes this and other information into account as it helps generate copy that is intended to drive traffic, increase social shares, and improve SEO.
Stay on Top of Reviews
Keeping track of the comments and reviews about your business on Facebook is both a customer service and marketing strategy.
You can highlight the good reviews as testimonials. On the other hand, responding to the negative ones shows customers that you care.
However, depending on the size of your brand, monitoring all of your mentions and comments can be difficult.
Socialdraft lets you monitor your brand’s mentions across the major social media channels. It also provides a weekly reputation report from across the web of the most important mentions.
All this is delivered right to your email each week.
Though Socialdraft is not free, it’s a small price to pay for a tool that not only monitors your business’ reputation, but also acts as an all-in-one tool for scheduling, organizing, and tracking your social media.
Post at the Right Time
Figuring out just the right day and time to post on Facebook will depend on the industry you’re in and your target audience.
That being said, research reveals that on average the best days to post are Saturday and Sunday. Each experience an over 30% higher engagement rate than other days of the week.
The best times to post are in the morning and evening, at 9 AM, 1PM, and 3 PM.
Again, your audience and vertical type will influence engagement.
Don’t let posting be a guessing gaming – utilize Facebook analytics to truly track the success of your posts.
With so many posts to track and optimize, using an organizational tool like Buffer can help you manage your Facebook campaign more easily. This tool is especially handy if your business operates on more than one social media platform.
The scheduling software lets you input up to 10 posts for one social media profile for free.
Additionally, it offers comprehensive analytics and tracking so you can see how your posts are performing. Then, you can make the appropriate adjustments.
Create Eye-Catching Content
Utilizing images and graphics on your Facebook page is essential.
Facebook posts with images are shown to increase engagement 2.3 times more than those without.
Using high quality images, an eye-catching design, or an infographic are all ways of creating effective posts to boost engagement.
For generating beautiful content, Canva is an excellent design tool.
Choose from a variety of preset themes and design elements, then simply drag and drop to customize the final product.
You can save the design for use in a future post, or immediately share it to your Facebook.
This tool makes it easy to generate high-quality visuals for any Facebook post or ad, regardless of what industry you’re in.
When running Facebook ads, the quality of the creative content used is crucial.
It also presents an opportunity for A/B testing and tracking. You can switch between the visuals used to see which performs better.
In order to monitor how your ad is performing and how best to optimize, AdEspresso is the tool of choice. Though it’s not a free software, they do offer a free trial.
Not only does AdEspresso offer customizable tracking information so you only focus on the metrics that matter, but also their software provides suggestions based on the campaign’s results to help you maximize ROI.
So, if the creative part of your ad just isn’t cutting it, or one version is outperforming another, this tool tells you exactly what the problem is and offers tips for improvement.
Using the tools available to you for improving your Facebook marketing is an excellent way to get ahead when the competition is stiff.
Whether you’re running a Facebook ad campaign or are just looking for ways to improve your business’ Facebook page, these are all strategies for benefitting your brand’s presence on the social media platform.
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Growth Hacks:
Give Your Customers Clear Instructions:
Social psychologist Howard Leventhal tested how effectively the two popular motivators, direction and fear, can convince students to get vaccinated.
Each student received a brochure with two controls, the brocure either had:
1. Strong language meant to instill fear about not getting vaccinated
and/or
2. Specific Instructions with clear Maps on HOW to get vaccinated.
The Result:
44% of people who went to get the shot were exposed to the high-fear brochures.
88% of the people who went to get shots had received the detailed plan for what to do next.
That means – specific instructions DOUBLE your conversions.
Optimizely removed the enter password and confirm password fields, opting instead to auto-assign passwords, which users were forced to reset when they came back.
Slideshare gets 70 million unique monthly visitors. You can leverage this to your benefit.
1. Repurpose your popular blog posts into Slideshare presentations
2. Place an offer of call to action at the beginning and the end
3. Offer to let them download the presentation with a tweet (free tool for this)
