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5 Ways to Reduce Ecommerce Fulfillment Costs Without Sacrificing Quality

Having a cost-effective business can help aid your PPC campaign efforts. How? By saving money in different aspects of your business, you can set aside the additional funds to go towards your campaigns.

Businesses will consider cutting production costs or thinking about the quality of their products. But, fulfillment is normally the one thing that often gets overlooked.

An ideal fulfillment partner will help your business save money. Reducing fulfillment costs allows you to allocate funds to your PPC campaign. For fulfillment, there are different aspects that can be cost-efficient for your business.

In this article, we discuss how to reduce fulfillment costs without sacrificing quality or customer experience.

1. Inventory Accuracy

Inventory accuracy is what you would think it means. It refers to inventory inaccuracies between your physical inventory and what is in your records. For most businesses that work through a 3PL provider, it would refer to the inconsistencies you might have with the inventory management software and what is actually in stock, whether it’s in the warehouse or in your store.

By keeping an accurate count of your inventory, you can reduce unneeded costs. How? First, you can reduce the number of purchases from your supplier. For example, you might see that you’re low on a best-selling item, so your instinct is to submit another order to your supplier. But, what if your inventory numbers actually were off? This could result in additional spending that was ultimately not needed.

Second, you can potentially reduce labor costs. By working with an inventory management system or a fulfillment provider that already has one, you can accurately keep track of your order and not spend hours manually counting all your items. Allowing you to allocate the additional labor costs you might have used to manually count your inventory to your marketing efforts, like your PPC campaign.

Inventory accuracy can also help with the promises you made on your website and in your ads. For example, you might create ads around on-time delivery and customer satisfaction. If your customers aren’t getting their packages on time, this can show your customers that you aren’t fulfilling your promises.

Keeping your inventory as accurate as possible allows for a few mistakes when it comes to delays. By seeing that a particular item is starting to run low on your warehouse shelves, you can be proactive by ordering more products. This in turn reduces the need for your customers to wait for a restock of their favorite item.x

However, a Campaign Automator can present customers with great alternatives and perhaps still make a purchase from your site when your items are low on stock.

Lastly, it can help guide ad efforts by helping you decide on which product to promote. If you have items that have been collecting dust on your shelves, it can be a motivator for you to create a campaign around them allowing you to reduce your storage costs at your warehouse.

On the flip side of this, you can also see how fast a product is selling and create a campaign to generate even more sales and revenue for your business.

2. Inventory Shrinkage

Inventory shrinkage plays a part in inventory accuracy. Inventory shrinkage ultimately explains why your inventory might not be accurate. Unfortunately, it’s unavoidable to have some amount of shrinkage. Why? It really boils down to three main root causes — employee theft, lost goods, and damaged goods.

Similar to inventory accuracy, missing inventory increases costs for your business. However, inventory shrinkage can be reduced. By working with a fulfillment provider that implements measures to reduce shrinkage, you can save money. However, you can even implement these measures yourself.

Here are measures you or your fulfillment provider can take to ensure inventory shrinkage is avoided:

By implementing these measures, you can avoid damaged, lost, or stolen inventory. Reducing the amount of money you spend on replacing items.

3. Better Rates with Carriers

The benefit of working with a fulfillment provider is better carrier rates. The rates you receive when working with national carriers aren’t the same as what 3PLs receive. 3PL providers work one-on-one with national carriers to get the best deals possible for both businesses.

In most cases, the right 3PL provider for your business can reduce shipping costs per item — enabling you to compete on price. By receiving better shipping costs, you use the additional spend you would save towards your PPC campaign.

You also have the opportunity to reduce product costs allowing for you to have a potential lead on your competition. But, you might ask fulfillment companies to get better deals on shipping. As mentioned before, fulfillment providers have one-on-one relationships with national carriers, but that is not all.

The first reason is package volume. Since normal fulfillment providers have dozens of brands and products sitting on their shelves, national carriers are constantly coming through the warehouse to pick up items instead of visiting one store a few times a month.

The second reason is contracts. Each 3PL creates contracts with the national carriers at the beginning of the year. These contracts involve negotiations and deals to ensure that the fulfillment’s clients get the best deals possible.

4. Packaging Supplies

Another way fulfillment can be cost-effective and allow for your PPC campaign to grow is the packaging. Fulfillment companies know packaging. It’s their job.

By offering different size boxes and infill options, fulfillment companies can help you find the right packaging system for your company.

You might not think it can reduce costs, but finding the perfect box for your products is essential. Why? The wrong size of your box could create additional costs for your business. Most national carriers rely on DIM weight over actual weight; however, both are used.

DIM weight vs actual weight

DIM or dimensional weight is a formula used by carriers to determine the price based on the volume of the package. By using this formula, carriers are able to add in box size rather than just weight. The actual weight is just that — the actual weight of your package.

As mentioned before, carriers use both options to determine the billable weight, but it’s more of an either-or scenario. If your box is heavier than the DIM weight calculation, you will be charged for the actual weight of the package. If your DIM weight is more than your actual weight, then you will be charged based on the DIM weight instead.

The issue businesses will run into is picking a larger box for a smaller item. This in turn increases your shipping cost. By picking the correct box, you will pay the appropriate amount for shipping and not run into additional shipping costs.

Green Packaging

Did you know that 64% of Americans spend more on green products? If you sell green products, why not go the extra mile with green packaging? For some fulfillment companies like Red Stag Fulfillment, the leftover cardboard is turned into infill — reducing the number of times plastic infill is used. It helps the environment and also reduces costs on infill.

5. Increase Customer Orders

If you work with a fulfillment provider, you can gain customer loyalty. Having your packages arrive on time and intact, it can make your customers happy. Happy customers increase customer loyalty.

Accurate and on-time deliveries can make or break a customer’s buying journey. It might sound a little extreme but think back to your recent delivery that was late. How did you feel about the brand as you anxiously waited for the delivery? You might not have been too happy.

For some people, it could convince them to hold off on ordering from that brand for a while or ever again. However, a package that comes on time and in great condition can persuade your customer to come back to your site.

By increasing happy customers, you could see an increase in orders which in turn allows you to have more revenue to plan campaigns based on your marketing strategy.

Conclusion

By turning to fulfillment, you can look at ways to be more cost-effective and allow you to add additional funds to your PPC campaign or even create new ones. So, it’s important to look for an ideal partner that cares about your inventory and delivery standards.

You might see a complete change in available funds when making your fulfillment cost-effective, but a little goes a long way when it comes to PPC campaigns.

This is a guest post by Jake Rheude, Vice President of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment.

About the author:

Jake Rheude is the Vice President of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

Want to Increase Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate? Learn the 5 Factors That Influence It.

Are you looking for a helpful guide on how to increase ecommerce conversions? You’ve landed on the right page. But before we dive in, let’s quickly cover the basics.

What is Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

Ecommerce conversion rate is a metric that is calculated by dividing the total number of site visitors by the number of conversions. Because it’s a key metric for your store’s success, it pays to invest as much time and resources as possible into its optimization.

How To Measure Ecommerce Conversion Rate

You need two values to get your website’s conversion rate — the number of conversions and the total number of visitors. You can get both values from Google Analytics.

Here’s a simple formula for determining your website’s conversion rate:

Conversion Rate = (# Of Conversions ÷ Total # Of Visitors) x 100

For example, the number of conversions is 10 and the total number of visitors is 100, this will be the equation:

conversion rate = (10 ÷ 100) x 100

conversion rate = (0.1) x 100

conversion rate = 10

​​​​​​​What Is A Good Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

You might be wondering: what is a good average conversion rate for an ecommerce store? The short answer is that it depends on your market.

Omniconvert recently ran a study to determine the average conversion rates for the most popular ecommerce niches, and here’s what they found:

But while it’s fine to settle with a good conversion rate by this definition, it’s a sweeter deal to go beyond the average. This grants you the opportunity to outperform your competition and generate higher income.

For example, if the average conversion rate in your industry is between 0.90% to 1.00%, it’s best to aim for a higher figure — 2.50% (or above).

5 Factors That Influence Ecommerce Conversions

To help you achieve a conversion rate that’s better than the average, take note of the factors that can affect the increase in conversions.

1. Product-Audience Fit

The product-audience fit refers to market demand (or lack thereof) for your product. And achieving product-audience fit is among the pillars of a successful business.

If you achieve product-audience fit, it means the market is on your side. There’s demand for your product, and you know how to reach the right type of customers searching for it.

Here are tips on how you can achieve a product-audience fit:

2. Order And Payment Forms Design

Your order and payment forms’ design is also one of the reasons a customer might decide whether or not they want to pursue buying your product. If your form makes the order and payment processes difficult for them, a potential customer is likely to leave your website before completing a purchase.

Here are the elements in a form that make things difficult for online shoppers:

Image source

If your order and payment forms aren’t optimized for mobile, you have another problem to fix.

According to different studies, the conversion rates on non-responsive forms dip quite significantly. Considering that a big segment of shoppers prefers to use their mobile phones to make purchases, the responsiveness of your forms could make or break your business.

Here are more tips for designing order and payment forms:

3. Supported Payment Methods

Payment gateways are merchant services that process payments for ecommerce stores. They’re a vital part of your website because, without them, your customers can’t send you payments.

This is also why it’s important to choose a trustworthy payment gateway that your customers would find easy to use.

The most popular high-quality payment gateways are:

A concern is, that there could still be security vulnerabilities involved even if you choose high-quality payment gateways. Malware issues, data breaches, and incidents of fraudulent hacking are possibilities — and they’re out of your control. The solution? Be aware of them and seek protection in advance.

Here are the best practices for choosing supported payment gateways:

Giving customers alternative payment options can also influence conversions. That’s because even if some payment gateways are more popular and commonly used, there are customers who’d find it more convenient to transfer money using other methods.

Here are some alternative payment options:

4. Trust Badges

Trust badges are visual symbols that you can add to your website that confirm the trustworthiness of your business. For an ecommerce website, gaining the trust of customers is of paramount importance.

Image Source

As the image below shows, one of the reasons for cart abandonment is the lack of trust that customers have in an ecommerce website. Notably, the bar chart shows that 17% of cart abandonments happen because a customer doesn’t trust the site.

Image Source

A fair way to look at this situation is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. If you’re about to buy from a website, wouldn’t you feel secure if it had a trust badge?

Here are facts about using trust badges:

Below are the main types of trust badges.

One concern is that there could still be security vulnerabilities involved even if you choose high-quality payment gateways. Malware issues, data breaches, and incidents of fraudulent hacking are possibilities — and they’re out of your control, even more so when you do not protect your devices from prominent threats.

The solution? Be aware of them and seek protection in advance.

5. Customer Support

Customer support can make or break your business. If your customer support works like a well-oiled machine, you’ll see your website’s conversion rates skyrocket. But if you won’t bother making customers feel like they can rely on you, the rate will go down.

Aside from raising conversions, here are the other reasons customer support is important:

The most effective channels for customer support are phone (VoIP phone system) and live chat. Their main advantage over email is that the conversations are happening in the real-time, solving customer problems as they arise.

Here are more approaches you can take to deliver impressive customer support:

Conclusion

Remember that in order to increase your ecommerce conversion rates, you need to focus on optimizing different functions and areas of your business. After all, conversions are just a reflection of how likely the customers are to purchase products through your website.

Persuade them that it’s a good idea, make this process easy and fun, and later delight them post-purchase — and you’ll do just great!

This is a guest post by Vlad Shvets, the growth manager at Paperform.

A Proven 5-Step Communication Model To Win Client Buy-In

Communication is what we do as marketers and as human beings. It’s the heart of how we relate to each other and create trust. Having a communication model you trust can make a world of difference to client satisfaction and longevity.

“Not happy with communication” ranks as a top reason clients leave agencies or partners. Good communication aims to unlock value and remove ambiguity from all stakeholders.

The 2018 Salesforce “State of Service” report found that 80% of customers say the experience a business provides is just as important as their product or service – a number that’s not likely gone down since.

In my nine years formulating digital media solutions for clients from many verticals, including travel, finance, automotive, retail, pharma, electronics, entertainment, and CPG, this 5-step framework helped me communicate with purpose and achieve maximum potential gains with my clients and teams:

Step 1: Listen

As marketing experts, it is very tempting to start formulating solutions and judgments while expressing the task or idea. Practice active listening without judging or developing an opinion.

Appreciate how the idea was formulated. Lastly, pay attention to your client’s body language; what are people telling you with their eyes or facial expressions?

Step 2: Paraphrase

Repeat & summarize what you think you have heard. This ensures you understand the task and gives the client a chance to confirm or offer additional information.

Step 3: Test

Paraphrase but change a few variables deliberately. See if the result of the paraphrase is consistent. Testing ensures no unmissed subtleties and helps remove ambiguity. It is also used to unlock the truths about the matter.

This is also your chance to ask questions. We ask questions to learn and create connections. Asking the right questions will cut through the clutter, find the argument’s weaknesses, and get a new sense of direction or insights.

It should reveal someone’s motivation and shed light on the end goal.

Simple and direct questions usually get you the best answers. Often, people end up rambling or derail from the question, so it is crucial to be persistent and patient while holding them accountable.

Step 4: Suggest

Use the facts you learned from the previous step to know where the opportunity is and what the client wants to do. This is the opportunity to let your expertise and professionalism shine.

Use the information you’ve gathered from the test phase to make the most efficient & effective recommendation to meet client goals.

Step 5: Agree & Apply

At the end of the conversation, ideas may have shifted, and new concepts evolved. End the conversation with an agreement. The agreement is now in place, so apply any new findings immediately.

Let’s look at this in an actual example and see the five steps in action:

Example

It’s a Thursday afternoon, you are near the end of a client WIP. You are about to wrap up, and the main client suddenly asks for a bunch of stuff.

“We have a few promotions going on, and I want to support them with some paid search activity. The previous manager said to follow the set up of old campaigns, and I want it to go live tomorrow morning.”

Now let’s try the five steps.

Step 1: You perform active listening, despite happy hour starting, and you smell the hors d’oeuvre from the community area.

You nod your head make eye contact while giving short verbal confirmations like “I see .”Read the client’s body language. What are they communicating with their face, their arms? Are they closing off or opening up?

Step 2: Paraphrasing can look or sound like:

Step 3: Test

Switch up a few variables in the form of either statements or questions:

While the client relies on our expertise to know the answers to their problems, it is always a better experience when you ask questions to spark the client’s thinking and make them feel like they are forming the solution with you.

Step 4: Suggest

“It sounds like promotion X is the most important. Based on the data from the last sale, I know that the peak revenue happens one week after the promo goes live.”

“Let’s prioritize this tactic, use x audience strategy, and go live with a phased approach. Instead of targeting the whole DMA, why don’t we focus on a few geographies that are our highest selling?”

Step 5: Agree & Apply

Once you align on the plan & next steps, send a follow-up email to recap.

The end goal is that the client should feel like you understand who they are, their business, and what they need to succeed. Often, the client might not even know what they want.

But we, as search experts, can hear what they want, know how to execute strategically, ensure we are on the same page, and finally put it into action.

Use this framework to position yourself as a trusted partner and advisor who can help them solve the problem.

This is a guest post.

About Melissa:

With over 9 years of experience in paid search marketing & having worked in and developed performance media solutions in the USA, New Zealand, Australia, and China, Melissa offers valuable insights across countless markets and verticals. Her exceptional ability as an artist also helps her to inject creativity into a specialism that can often be mechanical. She specializes in unique opportunities to drive business growth by connecting data with creativity and bringing performance strategies to life. Melissa currently works at RPA, an independent LA-based advertising agency.

The Essential Guide to Conducting Effective Keyword Research

Whether you’re a SaaS or Ecommerce business, conducting effective keyword research should be one of your top priorities. Essential to the success of your digital marketing efforts, effective keyword research will give you insight into what kinds of searches your consumers are making, informing your content strategy across all channels.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of discovering and understanding the kind of search queries and keywords your target audience uses when searching for your products or services.

It involves exploring the kinds of keywords that resonate most with your consumers and using keyword research tools to analyze their effectiveness.

Why is keyword research so important?

Effective keyword research is key to your advertising efforts and content creation. Whether you want to run a new marketing campaign or are looking for ways to ramp up your revenue and customer base, keyword research will help you understand what kinds of things your consumers are searching for.

Since keyword research will give you insight into what customers search for, you’ll be able to curate your content and its keywords based on those findings. It can also inform you of your current keyword success rates, giving you a chance to improve or rank higher than your competitors.

You want to be the site consumers come to for their queries and needs, which means getting as close as possible to the top of the first SERP and keyword research can help you get there.

To help you with the ins and outs, we’ve created an essential guide to conducting effective keyword research for your business.

1. Plan ahead and prepare.

To make your keyword research really effective, you have to hone in on your customers. You have to figure out what kinds of things they’re searching for, the keywords they’re most likely to use, and what kind of content you can create to fill their needs.

Consider all your marketing goals and objectives, and align them with the needs of your consumers. Research to understand your target audience, asking questions such as:

· What kinds of services or products are they searching for in your niche?

· What kinds of words and questions do they use when searching?

· What are the locations of your target audience (international or national)?

· Why are they interested in your products and services?

· What kind of content do they prefer?

Once you’ve prepped, you can start focusing on creating keywords that align with your customers’ habits and needs, guiding the kind of content and campaigns you create.

2. Explore and discover keyword ideas.

The first step to conducting effective keyword research is brainstorming new ideas. As well as just looking at customer habits and preferences, you should also do a bit of in-depth research into what keywords your competitors use and explore seed ideas from your niche.

Seed keywords

Often called starter keywords, seeds are the foundation of what your niche and products consist of. They’re usually composed of one to two words and directly relate to what you’re selling – and they’re the very beginning of your keyword research.

When coming up with seeds, think about the kind of keywords related to your industry and what your customers would typically search for. If you sell cakes, for example, some core seed keywords could include:

· Bakery

· Vanilla frosting

· Birthday cake

· Custom cakes

Though useful, it’s important to remember that seed keywords are just your starting point. You won’t necessarily be using these keywords in your content to target consumers, especially if you’re starting out in a competitive market.

These seeds, however, will help you in the later stages of your research, informing how you narrow down which topics to focus on.

Long-tail keywords vs. fat-head keywords

Otherwise known as seeds, fat-head keywords are the short and concise keywords that are the most popular and generic for your niche. On the other hand, long-tail keywords are generally longer search terms that are more specific and narrowed down to a particular topic.

Some examples of long-tail keywords for our imaginary cake shop could include:

· Vegan cakes in Colorado

· Cheesecake shop near me

· Cake decorating store

When doing your research, it’s key you consider whether you’re going to use long-tail or fat-head keywords, but most businesses opt for long-tail. The reason behind this is simple – you want to appear on the first SERP for a phrase you target, but to do so for very popular (fat-head) keywords is likely to take far too much effort and expense.

The most generic and common keywords are highly saturated, so competition is high. You have a better chance of ranking higher with highly specific keywords related to your niche. This goes for keyword research for PPC ads, too.

The more competitive a keyword, the more it’ll cost to beat your rivals to those clicks.

Get into the mind of users.

Another easy way to come up with keywords is by getting in the minds of users and potential customers. As well as thinking of what kind of searches they’re likely to make, do some research yourself!

Have a look at Quora and Reddit for ideas, searching for the most used keywords and phrases in questions within your niche. You might be surprised at what you find, but it could help inform you of what kinds of keywords to include next in your content or ads.

It could also be worth asking your consumers what they search for and what kinds of keywords they’re most likely to use. Consider using outbound telemarketing software and surveys to get in touch with consumers, asking them their most common questions about your products or services so that you can tune your content accordingly.

This will also help show you which topics and areas to hone in on when conducting keyword research.

Look at your competitors.

Take a deep dive into the kinds of keywords your competitors use – and this is where your brainstormed list of seed keywords will come in handy! Use those seeds to inform you of what kind of competition to look at.

If we use the example of our cake shop, we’ll find that we want to stay away from the overly commercialized and popular cake shops and bakeries, such as Greggs (for the UK) or Hummingbird Bakery. You shouldn’t see major players like this as your competitors, instead, look at those on a similar scale to yourself within your direct niche.

Perhaps you specialize in vegan cakes within the Toronto area – zone in on these details and find your competition within these margins. Once you’ve narrowed down your competitors, type in your seeds looking at what businesses come up first on the SERP.

You can then plug the most popular keywords into a site explorer or keyword research tool (more on this later) to find similar keywords to use. These tools will also give you insight into the amount of traffic that these sites are getting from using these keywords, helping you ascertain whether they’re worthwhile to use in your content or not.

3. Use keyword research tools.

One of the easiest ways to discover new keywords is using keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs. These tools will help pull up a list of related keywords for your niche while also showing the ranking factor of each word.

They’re also important for researching the analytics behind each term, something you might already be doing with your Ecommerce analytics for store growth and revenue.

Completely free and easy to use, Google Keyword Planner is great at generating new keyword ideas that use your seed keyword for inspiration while also coming up with its own suggestions.

The Planner will also show you average monthly searches for each term, as well as their competitive rate. This is especially important when deciding whether to use a fat-head or long-tail keyword, as you’ll always want to pick one that’s most specific to your niche, to make it as easy as possible to be as high on the first SERP as you can.

Ahrefs is an equally useful tool but will cost you – it all depends on how serious you are about keyword research. While Google’s tool is more than enough to assist you, Ahrefs goes the extra mile by generating up to one million ideas with extra analytics available.

4. Analyze your keywords.

You must analyze your keyword choices to optimize campaigns and content to see if they’re doing consistently well. We’ve already covered how you can use keyword research tools to understand the intent before choosing keywords, but it’s just as important to check once you’ve implemented them into your content.

Just as you might use call metrics to understand the growth of your call center over time, you should use analytics to understand how many users your content is attracting over a period of time.

5. Incorporate keywords into your content.

Once you’ve completed your research, you can start incorporating your keywords into content and campaigns – experiment with ad types and email marketing to see what kind of content your users prefer. Though keyword success is important, it’s also crucial you use and deliver content in a format that appeals most to consumers.

6. Have the right systems in place.

Make sure you have the right systems and software in place that will allow you to conduct keyword research effectively. If you’ve got a team working on it remotely, ensure they’re equipped with the right marketing automation tools so they can focus on the most important tasks.

You could also consider installing an enterprise network security solution across your systems to protect your data and software. This is especially important if you have staff working in different locations.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author:

Victorio is the Associate SEO Director at RingCentral, a global leader in cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions. He has over 13 years of extensive involvement in web and digital operations with diverse experience as a web engineer, product manager, and digital marketing strategist.

How Can D2C Brands Leverage PPC Ads to Drive Customer Acquisition?

D2C Ecommerce retail is skyrocketing. The global D2C sales have almost doubled in the last two years, and this uptrend is likely to continue. Brands like Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, Casper, and BarkBox are revolutionizing the D2C space.

Consumers are also showing interest in shopping from D2C brands. Over 40% of customer spending is projected to go towards D2C retail. As a result, 78% of D2C brands have increased their marketing budgets.

However, increasing your marketing budget isn’t enough. You need to implement the right marketing strategies to get more sales.

Paid advertising has emerged as one of the most effective marketing strategies for D2C brands. Here is a comprehensive guide that will help you leverage PPC ads to drive customer acquisition.

The D2C Business Landscape and Target Audience

Ecommerce has grown exponentially in the past couple of years. Global retail Ecommerce sales have doubled from $2,982 billion in 2018 to $4,891 billion in 2021. Furthermore, they’re projected to reach $6,388 billion by 2024.

One of the fastest-growing segments within Ecommerce is direct-to-consumer (D2C) retail. D2C Ecommerce sales in the US alone touched $129 billion in 2021 and are likely to reach $175 billion in 2025.

Global Growth of D2C Ecommerce

Several factors are fueling the growth of D2C Ecommerce, including:

These intermediaries charge a commission on every sale, which reduces the brand’s profit margin. D2C eliminates such intermediaries, allowing brands to be more profitable.

This first-party data also allows D2C brands to streamline their marketing campaigns and acquire new customers.

Target Audience for D2C Brands

If you want to run successful, high-performing marketing campaigns, you need to first understand your target audience.

D2C brands primarily rely on digital channels to reach customers and drive sales. Thus, their target audience includes younger consumers that actively use online channels. Three-quarters of the D2C customer base is under the age of 55 years. Millennials and Gen Z readily shop from D2C brands.

There are various reasons younger customers prefer shopping from D2C brands, including:

D2C Sales Funnel and Acquisition Channels

The D2C marketing and sales funnel are similar to the standard marketing funnel. It comprises three stages:

D2C brands can use several channels to reach customers and drive sales. The channel you choose depends on your goals. If you’re looking for a marketing strategy to support your long-term goals, SEO and social media can be effective channels.

If you have short-term goals and want to drive quick sales, paid advertising or PPC advertising is one of your best options. Since many D2C brands focus on getting quick, consistent sales, PPC advertising has emerged as the preferred marketing strategy for them.

How Can Paid Advertising Campaigns Bolster D2C Customer Acquisition?

One of the major reasons to use PPC ads is versatility. You can use them at every stage of the sales funnel. When your prospects are in the TOFU stage, PPC ads help you increase brand and product awareness.

In the consideration stage, PPC ads enable you to filter customers based on their intent and drive engagement. PPC advertising in the BOFU stage is all about getting sales.

Quick entry, versatility, and seamless optimization are some other reasons to use PPC marketing. Unlike SEO that takes months to show results, PPC ads start driving results sooner. This way, D2C brands can promote their products instantaneously and penetrate the market.

PPC ads are highly versatile as you can run them for every awareness stage. You can tailor your content strategy and marketing messages based on customer awareness and positioning, and goals.

Paid ads also offer versatility in terms of ad formats. There are so many paid advertising formats:

Additionally, PPC ads are measurable and trackable. You can set and track key performance indicators (KPIs) of each ad campaign to determine how it’s performing. This also paves the way for A/B testing — running two versions of an ad simultaneously to determine which one performs better.

This trackability and scope for experimentation make PPC ads an excellent alternative to print ads and physical advertisements that are usually not easy to measure.

Note: There is a smart way to make your print ads, billboards, and other physical advertisements measurable — using QR codes. All you need to do is create a QR code, link it to the target URL, and place it on your ad. Users can scan the code from their smartphone to engage with it.

QR codes are trackable, and you can see how many times your code has been scanned and from which location and device.

Leveraging Google PPC Ads for D2C Customer Acquisition

Paid advertising is beneficial for D2C brands, but it’s also competitive. Almost every D2C brand uses paid ads to increase awareness and boost customer acquisition.

So how can you stand out in a saturated market?

Here are four steps you can take to effectively use PPC ads for increasing customer acquisition, retention, and revenue.

1. Planning Ad Campaigns Based on Your Marketing Strategy

The first step in setting up a paid ad campaign is to formulate a marketing strategy that includes reaching prospects across awareness stages. Let’s look at how you can use paid ads for each awareness stage.

Top of the Funnel

In the TOFU stage, your aim should be to create brand awareness and educate people about your brand and the products you sell. Display ads enable broad interest targeting, and hence, they’re best suited for building awareness.

You can also use social media ads and search ads to engage people at the top of the funnel.

Middle of the Funnel

Customers in the middle of the funnel are aware of your product but aren’t yet ready to buy. At this stage, your ads should focus on instilling confidence in their minds. You can do that by sharing case studies and testimonials. You can also promote the benefits you offer, like a “free 30-day money-back guarantee.”

Remarketing is effective at this stage. In remarketing, you show ads to people who visited your website or a product page but didn’t complete a purchase. Retargeting ads can help nurture these prospects and push them further down the funnel. Besides, retargeting ads have a 10x higher CTR than traditional display ads.

Targeting rivals is another useful approach in the MOFU stage. It’s an aggressive advertising strategy where you target potential customers searching for your competitors. The idea behind this strategy is to show the customers what you offer is better than what your competitors provide.

Bottom of the Funnel

The final stage is the bottom of the funnel, where your only objective is to convert a prospect into a customer. At this stage, you can leverage branded search campaigns, high-intent search ads, Google Shopping ads, and retargeting.

2. Tracking Ad Campaign Performance

In the previous section, we delved deep into developing a paid advertising strategy based on the awareness stage and your marketing goals. Now, let’s discuss the KPIs you can measure to track the performance of your ad campaigns.

The KPIs are different for each awareness stage.

TOFU

MOFU

BOFU

By combining all these metrics, you can track the performance of your ad campaigns accurately.

3. Optimizing Ad Campaigns to Boost Conversions

Now that you know which metrics to track, let’s understand how you can optimize your ad campaigns using these KPIs to boost conversions. We’ll pick a use case from each funnel stage for better understanding.

Let’s start with the TOFU stage. Suppose you run a display ad campaign that gets a lot of impressions but hardly any clicks (low CTR). It could be an indication that your ad isn’t catchy enough. Changing the image, headline, or description of the ad can help.

When you show ads to prospects in the MOFU stage, your ads may get a lot of clicks but few conversions (low conversion rate). A low conversion rate indicates that your offer isn’t engaging enough to convince the prospect to take action. Changing your landing page and revamping your offer can help.

You can also use A/B testing to test different landing pages, ad copies, keywords, audiences, etc., to find the best-performing options.

In the BOFU stage, you may have a high conversion rate but low RoAS. This means your ads are getting conversions, but the revenue generated is low. You can resolve this issue by reducing your customer acquisition costs.

4. Developing a Robust Lead Nurturing System and Sales Funnel

Gone are the days when siloed marketing was effective. Even though paid advertising is the most useful marketing strategy for D2C brands, you must complement it with other marketing and customer experience strategies.

For instance, you can support your paid ads by leveraging organic SEO. Ecommerce SEO has many benefits. It helps you rank higher on search engine results, drive brand awareness, expand remarketing audiences, and generate leads to fill your marketing funnel. Moreover, a solid SEO strategy can help you reduce your paid advertising costs.

The next step is to boost the user experience at each touchpoint. D2C brands generally use various touchpoints to acquire customers. Some examples include paid ads, organic SEO, social media, and email. It’s essential to identify all these touchpoints and ensure a seamless onboarding process on all of them.

Finally, invest in post-purchase engagement to elevate customers to the stage and loyalty and advocacy and increase their lifetime value (LTV). Asking for feedback, requesting referrals, and implementing cross-sell/upsell strategies are useful ways to engage your customers after a purchase.

Conclusion

The rise of D2C brands has been one of the major trends in the Ecommerce space in the last couple of years. Many customers prefer buying from D2C brands to enjoy authenticity, low prices, and convenience.

If you are a D2C brand, you can leverage paid advertising to increase brand awareness, engage potential customers across awareness stages, and drive customer acquisition.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author:

Akshay is a digital marketer and a startup enthusiast exploring the myriad avenues of everything marketing. At Beaconstac, he enables companies to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds through the use of custom QR codes.

How to Use First-Party Data for PPC Campaigns

Data is increasingly becoming an asset to companies. It provides insights that would otherwise be impossible to access, and this is essential to marketers and PPC campaigns.

We take a look at it - specifically, at first-party data - below.

What Is First-Party Data?

First-party data is any form of data a company gathers from its audience. This could mean customers or even just website visitors.

First-party data isn’t only harvested from a company’s website. It can be sourced from mobile applications, email and SMS marketing, Google Analytics, phone calls, and more.

Marketers and PPC experts can use this data to inform their campaigns and ensure they’re appropriate for their audience.

How Does First-Party Data Differ from Second and Third-Party?

The type of data you use - whether first-party, second, or third - is ultimately a trade-off. You must compromise on something, and this is usually either the quality of the data or its reach.

Third party data

Second-party data is gathered by another company in a related industry about its customers. This means it’s less specific to you but still helpful. Third-party data, on the other hand, is collated from many sources - it spreads its net wide but isn’t necessarily as focused. It’s often collected through tools like cookies.

Data of any kind is essential for marketing. It enables you to see how successful a campaign is and how customers behave, allowing you to alter and improve your efforts. In March, however, it was confirmed that Google was removing support for third-party cookies, effectively putting an end to third-party data.

This means it’s more important than ever to know how to use customer-provided data rather than relying on the trends previously found in third-party data.

First-party data is frequently considered to be the best data due to its quality and specificity. 92 percent of leading marketers believe it’s critical to growth. As logically follows, there are several benefits to utilizing this kind of data for PPC campaigns.

The Benefits of Using First-Party Data

Supercharged Campaign Relevance, Reach, and Performance

While the initial reach of the data gathered is reduced compared to other data sources, its specificity enables you to accurately tailor campaigns. You can ensure they’re relevant to your audience, perform well, and ultimately increase your customer base.

Access to Better Data

As already identified, first-party is often considered the best source of data. That’s because:

We won’t deny there are benefits to other types of data, but when it comes to PPC in particular, specificity is essential to success and extracting maximum value from your ad spend.

Maximum Opportunity for Personalization

With such nuanced and detailed data, you can also begin to really personalize your marketing efforts. This is incredibly important, as 91 percent of customers want the content to be personalized and aimed directly at them, even though the majority of marketers do not provide this.

The Challenges of First-Party Data

As with anything in life, it’s rarely simple. While first-party data is undeniably useful, it can still bring challenges. We address some of these below.

Building a First-Party Data Strategy

One of the complications with first-party data comes from combining large amounts of information from different sources - data that can often be siloed and difficult to integrate. As a result, you need to strategize.

This involves taking into consideration the source of your data. Think about the data you want to harvest – what information do you wish to gain from this to put it into action and make it useful?

When considering PPC, this might be understanding why clicks aren’t leading to conversions. Also, how are you going to map this data strategy throughout the customer journey?

By considering these issues when building your strategy, you can ensure your first-party data is working for you rather than simply causing a heavier workload.

Competitive Analysis and Decision-Making Needs to Be Real-Time

It’s undeniable that we live in a fast-paced world. This applies to business insights as well. Customer data can change incredibly quickly. By using tools like Google Analytics you can see your data in real-time and make changes accordingly.

For example, changing the copy on a PPC ad that’s not delivering as successfully as expected.

Maintaining Data Privacy

Maintaining data privacy is extremely important in this day and age. There are regulations in place to help – for example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – which function to keep those harvesting and using data accountable and protect customers from bad actors.

Learn the policies in place for your location and put them into practice. For example, GDPR requires you to gain consent before collecting third-party cookies. Use a pop-up when new people visit your site so they can decide how they want their data to be used before continuing.

First-Party Data Tactics for Your PPC Campaign

Onto the good stuff! Now you understand the role of first-party data, its pros, and its cons, you need to start making use of certain actionable strategies that allow you to leverage first-party data as part of your PPC efforts.

We’ve covered a few of these below.

Integrate Data into Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an extremely helpful tool when it comes to first-party data and making PPC decisions. Important data points include lead scoring, lead-to-sale conversion rates, and the total sale value of generated leads. By accessing this data in real-time, you can make fast-paced decisions and changes to your PPC adverts.

Control Budget Efficiency

With PPC strategies, you want to ensure your money is being used wisely. You can create an optimized remarketing list for search ads (RLSA) based on your first-party data, which targets leads who have a high likelihood of converting.

Simply put, it would be a waste of time to show PPC ads to people who wouldn’t be interested in your products or service. These lists can find potential leads and ensure the ad is going to the person it was intended for — your future customer.

Achieve Higher Target and Bidding Accuracy

First-party data can provide information for employing more accurate bidding techniques. While this can be done manually, it might be worth utilizing Smart Bidding strategies. This is the process of automating your bids with Google Ads to maximize a specific conversion goal.

First-party data comes into this by providing post-campaign, pre-Smart Bidding strategy analysis. Though you may feel apprehensive handing over control to an automated process, knowledge is power. This data will provide in-depth insight to inform and improve your strategy.

Turn Out Better, Expanded Audience Targeting

As we know, first-party data can provide crucial information on customer trends, behavior, and engagement. Through this, you can better understand your customer base and begin to expand and reach out to potential new leads.

You can use features such as Google’s Similar Audiences to generate new lists based on those you’ve already created.

This data enables you to target customers regardless of what part of the funnel they’re in. Once you understand the people you’re trying to interact with, it’s easier to find ways to appeal to them.

Boost Smart Bidding with Offline Conversion Data

As previously mentioned, not all data comes from your website. For example, data gathered via SMS or phone call isn’t tracked or gathered by Google. From experience, we know phone calls, in particular, can lead to high-value sales, but this data isn’t always captured.

Offline data might include information such as lead quality, sales generated via phone calls, and the value of sales earned. You can use call tracking tools to prevent missing this crucial data and optimize your Smart Bidding by working from the full picture.

Maximize Campaign Personalization

First-party data enables businesses to tailor their campaigns to their customers. The detailed insights into who your customer base is – demographically and behaviorally speaking – mean you can personalize your campaign in a way that speaks to your audience.

For example, if you’re a software as a service (SaaS) company, there will likely be certain links between the people using your software. Your software helps them to reach a common goal, and this can be used to tailor your campaign. Use this information alongside SEO for SaaS to create a fully developed and functional marketing strategy.

Easier Feed Management

Feeds enable campaign services, such as Google Smart Shopping, to run efficiently. Through first-party data, you can easily see which keywords are most impactful and learn other important pieces of information that enable you to manually optimize your product feed.

In today’s market, personalization is key to making sure your company stands out and stays ahead of the competition.

First-Party Data and PPC Efforts Can (and Should) Go Hand-in-Hand

It’s undeniable that PPC campaigns and first-party data should work together. As third-party data moves out of the picture, you must learn how to rely on your own data instead.

If you were to solely turn to second-party data, you would run the risk of gathering less relevant information. The more insights you have into your customer base (and the more specific these are), the better your PPC ads will be.

Use first-party data to your advantage today!

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author_
Nick Brown is the founder & CEO of accelerate, a SaaS marketing agency that exclusively partners with enterprise tech companies to scale their SEO and content marketing. Nick has launched several successful online businesses, written and published a book, and grown accelerate from a UK-based agency that now operates across the US, APAC, and EMEA. He has written for sites like BigCommerce and SmallBizDaily.

How Lead Tracking Can Improve Google Ads ROI

Anybody can track conversions. Smart marketers track leads. Why is this lead identification information important?

It’s not enough to know that someone called your business. You need to know more such as:

A conversion is not necessarily a lead, which is why it’s a bad idea to base your marketing decisions on conversions alone. In this article, we’ll explain how leads are different from conversions.

We’ll also go into detail regarding how Google Ads tracks conversions. As you’ll see, there are some limitations to the amount of information that Google Ads can track.

Next, we’ll describe how you can track individual leads instead of simply tracking conversions. We’ll also reveal how this enhanced data can be used with a tool like Optmyzr to improve your entire Google Ads strategy.

The Limitations of Google Ads Conversion Tracking

Google Ads is a powerful tool that does have some limitations. Issues arise when you try to track individual leads and measure lead quality.

Conversions vs. Leads

Conversion numbers tell you how many people took an action; lead data tells you who took action and whether they’re a sales-ready lead.

When tracking forms, chats, and calls, individual lead data tells you more than raw conversion numbers do. Google Ads can track these conversion actions, but it only shows total conversion numbers.

You’ll see the total number of leads from each conversion action, but not the identifying information for individual leads.

Google Ads has a phone call conversion tracking system that can track calls from call extensions on ads. It can also track calls from ads that have a location extension with a call option.

Unfortunately for marketers, Google’s built-in call tracking tool is not as effective as the third-party call tracking tools on the market.

Google’s call tracking feature tells you call conversions are coming in from ads, but you won’t know anything about the lead except that they saw your ad and called your business. You won’t know if they’re quotable leads.

Identifying quotable leads

Every business identifies quotable leads differently. Some simply look at the lead’s budget. Others look at their geographic location. Still, others look at the product fit.

All this information can usually be found in call transcripts, but Google does not provide these.

Screening non-qualified leads in Google Ads

Google Ads does have one way to screen non-qualified leads; by only passing along conversions if the call lasted over a minute.

The problem is that many calls can last 60-seconds and still not result in a qualified lead:

These are all non-qualified leads, and passing them along to Google Ads as conversions can skew your marketing reports. You may end up thinking an ad is working when it’s not. The longer you think that, the more marketing dollars you waste.

Google Ads can also track forms and chats, but the same limitations apply. Your Google Ads reports will only show the total number of conversions from each ad, separated by conversion type. You will not be able to see call transcripts, chat transcripts, or lead contact information.

This is where all the important lead information is contained; the data that tells you whether or not the lead is worth your time.

Running a Google Ads campaign costs money. In return, you want leads that drive revenue. Conversions alone are not necessarily worth any revenue, but quotable leads are.

Let’s find out how to make sure we’re getting quotable leads in return for ad spend.

How to track individual lead data with Google Ads

Lead tracking software fills in the gaps in your Google Ads data. Software like WhatConverts can integrate with Google Ads so you can see individual lead data, mark leads as quotable, then pass them to Google Ads as rock-solid conversions. Passing only quotable leads into Google Ads will improve your entire PPC strategy.

What about when it comes time to optimize your Google Ads? Optimization means identifying the ads that work, then shifting marketing spend towards effective ads and away from ineffective ads.

You won’t know what ads work if you’re only tracking conversions. If you can identify the ads that actually drive quotable leads, however, you can optimize accurately.

How to send quotable leads to Google Ads

A lead tracking system like WhatConverts allows you to easily mark leads as quotable or not quotable. For phone call leads, you can simply press “1” after the call if the lead is qualified or “2” if they aren’t. You can also assign sales value for phone call leads during this step.

For all leads, you can mark leads as quotable with one click of a button in your leads dashboard or in the email notification for the lead. Once you’re marking leads as qualified, it can greatly improve your marketing reporting. Here’s an example of how qualified lead reporting reveals more about how many leads come from individual keywords.

You can use WhatConverts to only pass conversions to Google Ads if they meet certain parameters such as, “only pass along the conversion if the lead is marked as qualified" (quotable). You can also choose to only pass along conversions if the lead is assigned a sales value in WhatConverts or your CRM.

Use Optmyzr and Lead Tracking Software to optimize Google Ads

Running a successful Google Ads campaign involves measuring a lot of variables. You don’t just want to know that your Google Ads drive quotable leads; you want to know which ad groups, ads, keywords, and landing pages drive quotable leads.

Once you have this information, you can optimize ads with a tool like Optmyzr. The more information you feed into the optimization system, the easier it is for Optmyzr to make useful suggestions about how to optimize ads.

If you pass every conversion to Google Ads without marking them as quotable, Optmyzr will make suggestions based on the conversion data alone. That means you could end up shifting marketing spend towards keywords and campaigns that drive solicitations or support calls from existing customers.

Taking the extra step to pass only quotable leads to Google Ads gives Optmyzr better data. Optmyzr can make suggestions to shift marketing spend towards keywords and campaigns that drive quotable leads and revenue.

This is a better way to increase return-on-investment for Google Ads. Since Optmyzr makes suggestions based on your Google Ads data, it’s important to make sure that Google Ads data is accurate and actionable.

Lead Tracking Tools work with Optmyzr to Improve PPC Performance

The more you optimize Google Ads based on sales-ready leads, the easier it is to identify the ads that drive the most revenue. When it comes time to show reports detailing how your Google Ads performed, you want to be able to prove that the business is getting a return on investment.

The best way to do that is by showing which ads delivered quotable leads. Using lead tracking tools with Optmyzr makes this possible, and easy.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author

Mac Mischke is the Content Marketing Manager at WhatConverts, a call tracking software company for marketing agencies.

8 Engagement Trigger Ideas to Use In Your Retargeting Campaigns

How do you make sure your site visitors will return to make a purchase after they bounce? How do you accompany your prospects in every stage of the buyer’s journey? How do you increase customer retention?

Retargeting is the answer.

Retargeting has proven to boost conversions of paid campaigns significantly. Kimberly-Clark reports their conversion rates to reach 50-60% when they rely on retargeting.

Displaying paid campaigns with relevant content to people who have previously shown interest in your company might become the final step your potential customers need to make the purchase decision.

Below, you’ll find 8 engagement trigger ideas that will help you make the most out of every interaction of your prospects and customers with your brand online.

1. Search history triggers

One of the first things that comes to our minds when we think of retargeting is targeting users based on their search queries.

Search retargeting is indeed the most popular and very effective way to reach the most relevant audiences.

Note: Whatever trigger idea you choose, you should carefully align actions that trigger your campaigns to the respective stage of the buyer’s journey the action is associated with. Wait… what?

In simple terms, if your campaign fires after a user has searched for the ‘how to automate my marketing campaigns’ query, it’s a good idea to target a person with awareness-stage content that educates rather than sells.

On the other hand, if you target competitors’ keywords, it means that your audience is already familiar with the problem and the available solutions to it. Consideration-stage content, like product comparisons and whitepapers, will work the best for this campaign.

When setting up a search retargeting campaign, you should always take search intent into account.

Search intent defines the purpose of a user’s search. Every query entered into the search box carries one of the following types of search intent:

Informational intent

Queries with informational intent usually include the keywords like ‘how-to,’ ‘guide,’ ‘definition,’ ‘what is,’ and other phrases used to research the specific subject.

In this stage, a user isn’t ready to buy your product yet. However, it doesn’t mean you should target them with paid campaigns. To drive these people to a purchase decision, you should be able to support them in the early stages of their buyer’s journey. Retarget people that only start to explore the topic with top-funnel content, such as step-by-step guides, explanatory videos, etc.

Search phrases that include branded keywords, e.g., your competitor’s brand names, are indicators of navigational intent.

When retargeting this type of audience, use content where your competitor’s products are reviewed and compared to yours.

Transactional intent

Of course, most often, you’ll want to retarget users who’ve shown transactional intent. These people use phrases like ‘best,’ ‘top,’ ‘price,’ ‘buy,’ ‘cheap,’ and other modifiers. It’s best to put your product landing pages, customer stories, and promo codes in front of the audience at this stage.

2. On-site behavior triggers

The next popular retargeting technique is to reach audiences that have previously interacted with your website.

Instead of simply retargeting all website visitors with one campaign, it’s highly recommended that you segment your audiences by on-site behavior.

The most common triggers for behavioral retargeting are:

Pages a user visited.

If different sections on your website serve the interests of completely different audiences, it’s clear you don’t want to target these audiences with similar campaign content.

Time on site.

The longer a visitor stays on your site, the more relevant they find the information you provide. To avoid wasting your campaign budget on people who have accidentally come to your site, specify the amount of time a person should spend on the website before getting to your retargeting list.

The number of times a user visited your site in a given time period.

Targeting returning visitors enables you to reach higher conversion rates.

Which trigger should you choose for your campaigns? There’s no correct answer. To figure out the most effective approach, you need to A/B test every trigger you think will potentially work for you.

3. Email interaction triggers

Do you have a mailing list? Then you definitely need to retarget your contacts with paid campaigns.

People might leave their emails on your website for multiple reasons. This action is a strong indicator that whatever you offer is relevant to your audience.

It’s also a good idea to segment audiences and personalize your campaign content based on how your contacts interact with your emails. Here are the major actions you can use as triggers for your campaigns:

For better results, you can personalize campaign content based on the trigger of your choice.

Say, if a person has signed up for your email newsletter but has never opened your emails, you can try to remind them about your brand with educational content. If one opens your emails regularly and interacts with your content, don’t hesitate to promote transactional campaigns to them.

4. Paid campaign interaction triggers

This is our favorite type of retargeting campaign. With this approach, you can reach completely new audiences, drive them through the marketing funnel, and gently nudge them to make a purchase decision.

How does it work?

To collect audiences for a retargeting campaign, you launch a campaign targeting broad audiences and offering content on a narrow topic that allows you to filter out irrelevant clicks. Next, you install a pixel that gathers data on all the campaign clickers. These people will be your audience for the follow-up (retargeting) campaign.

This approach is widely used specifically in health and wellness marketing. By distributing top-funnel content, like free meal plans or workout videos, marketers attract the audience that is potentially interested in becoming paid customers and then retarget them with transactional ads.

5. Cart abandonment

This trigger is related to on-site retargeting, but it’s worth highlighting it as a separate point.

An average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.80%. So, you lose about 70% of sales to… distractions.

You can easily avoid it by following up with users who have reached the shopping cart but abandoned it with a retargeting campaign.

To incentivize people to buy from you, offer a discount or an exclusive gift in a retargeting campaign. Adding a sense of urgency is also an effective way to close more deals with ads.

6. Purchase history triggers

Running an eCommerce business? This strategy is a must for you.

When a person buys from you for the first time, you gain their trust.

If a product meets their expectations, you don’t need to provide long lists of benefits and competitive advantages you have to offer to convince them to purchase again. All you need to do is to show them more relevant products.

Therefore, retargeting customers after they have purchased from your brand is even more effective than trying to convert new audiences. Just make sure your offers are of interest to people you want to reach.

7. Retention triggers

While the previous trigger idea makes sense for eCommerce marketers, this one will be useful for SaaS companies.

Retaining customers is easier and cheaper than pursuing new prospects.

To maintain relationships with your existing customers and encourage them to keep working with your brand, you can:

Tip: If you run Facebook ads, display a follow-up campaign in Messenger – this will help you to initiate a conversation with your customer and boost loyalty.

8. Upselling triggers

Do you offer freebies? Retarget free users when they take specific actions in your tool.

HubSpot runs email campaigns triggered when free users try to interact with paid features. You can apply a similar approach to your email marketing or paid advertising campaigns.

Conclusion

Retargeting is a great way to boost conversions, provided you understand your buyer’s journey.

When selecting a trigger idea, make sure you align your campaign content with the audience’s awareness of the subject. With smart, personalized campaigns, you’ll be able to achieve your goals without too much effort.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author

Adelina is a Content Marketer at Joinative, a native advertising agency, and SaaS. She’s responsible for building marketing partnerships, establishing content collaborations, and developing actionable resources for advertisers.

What are Call Conversions in PPC Marketing?

In the modern and competitive world of business, not only does every tactic count but knowing the effectiveness of each tactic we employ is of the utmost importance. When we invest time and money into one particular marketing avenue, we want to be sure we’re getting a good ROI on those investments.

If you sell products online, you want to use different channels and platforms and to be able to track all relevant metrics. To do so, you first need to understand certain concepts and methods of tracking.

For example, what does inbound calls mean? These can come from a variety of sources and be a major source of sales and conversions. We also want to know how to optimize eCommerce conversion funnels to drive sales.

One popular form of marketing/advertising is PPC (pay per click) where a business pays the major search engines (or large websites) every time their ad is clicked. But when that ad is linked to a dedicated number, how do we go about tracking conversions that come via calls?

Tracking this metric is a crucial component of identifying how effective campaigns are. You want real insights into how PPC works for your company.

What Are PPC Calls?

When you’re mounting a PPC campaign, you might choose to dedicate a number, or numbers, to those ads. These numbers connect to your business line (or specific and relevant teams within your business) and can be either standard numbers or toll-free.

Depending on how many campaigns you’re running, a number may be assigned to each campaign, product, or landing page.

You can choose to insert these numbers on your website as a simple piece of script that changes the number usually seen by site visitors. These numbers can correlate to specific triggers you choose, such as the customer’s geographic location, the referral point that led to them calling you, or a specific PPC ad or keyword.

Ideally, you want FCR every time. And what is FCR? It’s your ability to resolve or convert a customer’s call the first time they contact you.

But how do you go about tracking these numbers and associated conversions? And does tracking them offer substantive benefits?

The Benefits of PPC Call Tracking

Optmyzr - benefits of PPC call tracking

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Despite the many channels available in the digital age, lots of customers still want to talk to a real person when making a purchase. This can be highly effective in achieving conversions as customers can ask questions in real-time and make an informed decision there and then.

The data you get from PPC call tracking offers a range of insights:

Optmyzr - PPC call tracking Google Ads

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While many businesses’ first choice for call tracking is Google Ads, it’s not ideal and can be difficult to install. However, it can be of great value when set up properly or used with a third-party software solution to get the best from your data.

To begin, you should:

  1. Set up conversion tracking; you do this in the conversions section of your Google Ads toolbox.
  2. Create a new tracking script based on calls.
  3. This is where Google Ads tracking gets tricky. You are offered three options but can only choose one, though the reality is you’ll likely want to pick all of them.
  4. To bypass this issue, create a conversion script for each of the three options.
  5. Choose ‘yes’ for the ‘include in conversions’ option.
  6. Set a bottom end for call length to be identified as conversions.

With point 6, we come to where the issue lies with only using Google Ads tracking to define metrics. For example, say you choose ‘five minutes’ as your low end for call length. While five minutes may be the average time in which your agents manage a conversion, a call of that length doesn’t mean you have converted a sale every time.

So, while Google Ads tracking may give you some idea of how your ads are performing, it doesn’t give you an accurate idea of how many calls were actual conversions. It could show you you had 100 calls in a certain period, but you don’t know from the data how many were conversions. To get a more accurate idea, you need to bring in some third-party software,

Third-Party Software

We already utilize the best marketing automation tools to boost conversion rates. Thinking about tools is no different when it comes to PPC. Just as you want the best network security companies protecting your data, so you want to choose the best third-party software for tracking PPC metrics.

If you’re going to rely on calls via PPC as a major source of sales conversions, you need more accurate data on how they are performing, and to do that, you need to utilize third-party software. Every business knows good data helps inform decisions when it comes to new campaigns, so you need a more in-depth idea of what’s going on.

If you want more accurate data, you will need third-party call tracking tools to provide more detailed overviews of your calls and conversions. The sort of features you may want to look for include:

Having a great PPC tool can help you improve your account performance. Knowing exactly what you require from it is the first step to choosing the correct tool.

Tips on How to Use PPC Tracking Properly

Optmyzr - tips on how to use PPC tracking properly

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Not all calls or customers are equal. And if you do think of them as being so, you will never get a true view of the effectiveness of the various ads and campaigns you have employed. Consider some of the statistics below:

So it is very much worth your while to think carefully about how you will track calls and what data you want to look at. Here are a few tips to help you.

  1. Make A/B (split) testing a regular exercise so you can see what combinations (ads, landing pages, keywords, etc.) work best together and improve lead quality.
  2. Local focus. Where possible, tie local numbers to a customer’s location. If they perceive you as being ‘more local’ than other businesses, you have a better chance of conversions.
  3. Separation. If you have multiple ads or campaigns running simultaneously, there is little point in having them all routed to the same number as it will muddle your data. Create dedicated numbers or extensions for each separate campaign.
  4. Good routing. If you handle a large number of calls, ensure those calls go to the staff best equipped to deal with them. Different teams may have different product-specific knowledge so use the strengths and knowledge your teams already possess.

The Takeaway

Calls remain an integral part of how we do business, and while most calls will be initiated by the customer, we should also consider what is an outbound call within our current model. While the customer may call you first, it may be you need to call them back or contact them later with more information.

There are many different ways to increase conversion rates, such as using interactive content to boost leads and conversions. With the likelihood that you offer an omnichannel experience, you need to segment every area to see what works best for you. By tracking your PPC call conversions, you can ensure you are focusing on the most important factors.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author

Elea is the SEO Content Optimization manager for RingCentral, a call center solution company the leader in global enterprise communication. She has more than a decade’s worth of experience in on-page optimization, editorial production, and digital publishing. She spends her free time learning new things.

6 Mistakes in Call Tracking That Are Harming Your PPC Campaigns

Call tracking is a form of conversion tracking that allows you to determine how many phone calls you’re receiving due to your pay-per-click advertising.

Let’s say you’re running an ad that offers free project management tools as a lead magnet. Your landing page is designed to capture leads. However, not everyone who lands on this page will fill out your contact form. Many of them will call you instead. If you’re not tracking your calls, you won’t be aware of how these calls are being prompted.

For example, if you generate 2000 leads a month and about 40% are calls, you are essentially working blind with a large proportion of your PPC budget. You’re entirely ignorant of the source of 800 potential customers. With call tracking, you can optimize your marketing to drive more calls and more success.

There are two types of calls you can track. The first type is those received directly from your ads. This is when people search on a smartphone and directly press the phone call button next to your advert. You will be charged for each call you receive in the same way that regular PPC ads charge you for every click.

The other type is phone calls prompted by your website. You receive these types of calls when someone clicks on your ad, lands on your website, sees your phone number, and manually dials it into their phone. This type of call is inherently more difficult to track because the conversion is not registered in your PPC campaign analytics.

When executed successfully, call tracking can help you to refine and improve your marketing campaigns. However, you need to be aware of the pitfalls. Here are 6 common mistakes that will harm your PPC campaign.

Image Source

1. Not using Dynamic Call Tracking.

So you’ve set up your pay-per-click ads on multiple platforms. You’ve got big shiny calls to action which encourage the viewer to give you a call. But when the calls come flooding in, you don’t know by which advert or platform each call has been triggered.

This is where Dynamic Call Tracking comes into play. It allows you to track what was previously untrackable. Dynamic Call Tracking enables you to track or change your phone number’s last three or four digits based on the site visitor’s source. Just as you use SKUs to track your inventory’s movement, you can use Dynamic Call Tracking to track your inbound leads’ movement.

You can set this up just for Google Ads traffic, Facebook traffic, or for all sources of traffic if you find this helpful. The last three or four digits of your phone number change to allow the Dynamic Call Tracking provider to identify that a tracking number has been called. This allows the conversion to be logged.

Most importantly, in the case of Google Ads, especially, is the ability to find out the exact keyword that prompted the phone call.

Image Source: Wordstream

2. Not having an omnichannel approach.

Most businesses make the mistake of not following up on calls adequately with an omnichannel approach. Just because an interaction starts as a phone call doesn’t mean that communication should be limited to this form of communication. You should implement an omnichannel sales process, which only begins with the calls you receive.

This means that your inbound call agent doesn’t just handle calls; they act as a complete virtual customer assistant. They should make sure that all your calls are logged into a CRM tool. These calls should then be followed up with the same attention you would dedicate to any other type of customer.

If you’re collecting an email address on a call with a user, you should send an automated follow-up email to wrap up the call with an actionable message inside. Not only does this keep the customer engaged, but you can start to track the open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates of these emails per phone number.

By doing this, you’ll see critical leading indicators of call quality beyond what call times alone can show you. Additionally, you’ll get quicker feedback than if you just wait for sales reports to come back.

3. Not scoring leads.

The concept of lead scoring, or call scoring, relates to the performance of different call sources. How meaningful or actionable are they? Every online advertiser knows that not all clicks are created equal. Many factors affect the value of a click, such as the keyword searched within the ad copy and the site the ad was running on.

Call scoring extends this concept. Be mindful of specific metrics that will help you to understand the actual value of a call better. A sophisticated marketer would never put a flat price on the value of a click to their website without evaluating what happened after a visitor’s arrival. Similarly, you should never assess a call campaign’s success by considering how many calls you received alone.

The easiest thing to look at beyond raw call count is call duration. It’s not a perfect metric, but it can paint you a much more informative picture than your raw call count.

For instance, you may find that calls that last under two minutes are unlikely to be of any value to your business. There is no meaningful customer engagement. Rather than counting the number of total calls you receive, you would be better off counting the number of phone calls that last more than two minutes.

Even more crucially, take a look at the ratio of long to short calls. Not only will the short calls be likely to have little or no value, but a noticeably higher ratio of short calls from a particular source often indicates below-average quality on longer calls from the same source.

Image Source

4. Not calculating the expected revenue per call.

While looking at call time is a step in the right direction, it’s certainly not all you should rely on. If you’re not able to discover the results of calls yourself, make sure you set up feedback loops to integrate the true sale or revenue numbers.

You should be retrieving the actual revenue number for each of your inbound call tracking numbers. Divide this by the number of total calls to calculate the average expected revenue per call. Make sure this is factored into the revenue calculations for the pages on which these calls are generated. Ensure it’s also incorporated into the ROI metric for the media spend that it took to attract the user.

Another vital element to increase the expected revenue per call is to prioritize the distribution of your calls. This allows you to make sure that your top-performing phone agents are fielding your highest value calls instead of your agents in training. It’s effective business management to optimize your call distribution in this way, as it can significantly impact your calls’ overall value.

5. Not optimizing keywords.

Another common error is not optimizing keywords based on the data received from tracking your calls. This is a vital part of marketing for small business.

Let’s say you have 100 keywords in your Google Ads account. You see that 20 of those keywords have a reasonable cost per lead and cost per sale based on onsite conversions. But it’s the other 80 keywords in the account that cause an issue. How do you know which ones to turn up, which ones to turn down, or which ones to turn off altogether?

Some of these keywords may be costing you money without any return whatsoever. To maximize the value of your PPC budget, you need to optimize your keywords.

To this end, knowing the value of every keyword in your Google Ads or Facebook account is so important. You can obtain more customers by allocating more spend towards the keywords or ads that are proven converters. Of course, you should also move your spend away from weak areas. You must cut wastage to get a better PPC ad performance from the same spend.

Image Source

6. Not recording calls.

The final mistake people make when call-tracking is not recording calls. Many people don’t record calls because they use a software solution like Twist, which has limited file storage. Many other people just don’t understand its benefits.

When you record your calls, you can access and re-listen to them at any given time. Recorded calls are a bank of information that you can use to make adjustments to your PPC campaign.

Listening to calls allows you to evaluate the types of leads you are garnering from a particular source. How strongly does this audience and its problems overlap with those of your target audience? Is the source a location worthy of your PPC budget spend?

Recording calls allows you to monitor and assess the work of your call center. It will enable you to complete a call center quality assurance evaluation sheet and determine whether your staff are doing their best job to help prospective clients get the answers they need. Are employees using the tools you’ve given them? Are they using excellent sales skills to resolve customer queries? Listening to the recorded calls makes it much easier to determine whether inbound leads are being dealt with professionally.

This is a guest post. The content here is for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the Author

Victorio Duran III is the Associate SEO Director at RingCentral, a global leader in cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions. He has over 13 years of extensive involvement on web and digital operations with diverse experience as web engineer, product manager, and digital marketing strategist.

Jan 2021 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo: New in Google, Microsoft & Facebook

January 2021 is the kickstart for a new year of rising opportunity, in the hopes that we can build on our foundations and push for success. Those foundations supported by platform improvements to aid us towards our targets and help maintain balance when faced with unsettling uncertainty, such as the introduction of iOS 14.

1. Google Ads

1.1 – Data Exclusion

Periods For Smart Bidding

There have been times when a business has to work around troubles with stocking, warehouse capacity, and even periods of server outage, which can skew data consistency. When it comes to something as data-dependent as smart bidding, this can cause a real issue in assuming false assumptions in demand. Fortunately, you can now exclude a range of time where your tracking may have been down, so that smart bidding doesn’t take into account that period of misleading data. Whilst it’s a shame this wasn’t available last year when we needed it most, at least we can be more prepared going forward.

1.2 – Target ROAS Now With Bid Limits

Recently, we have seen changes to our Target ROAS campaigns, allowing us to set minimum and maximum bid limits, which wasn’t previously available. It’s a very welcome addition; we’ve had our share of smart bidding anomalies with a CPC so high, you start questioning Google’s strategy. The support documents for tROAS campaigns have been updated to include this new feature.

1.3 – Similar Audiences Come With A Size

Whilst opinions may vary for ‘similar to’ audiences, it’s still another tool in our belt for account optimization. You can now view an estimated audience size for these similar audiences, giving you a bit more transparency as you expand your targeting. There are limitations, however, with the estimates only appearing for Search audiences of more than 20,000 and Youtube audiences of more than 5,000.

2. Microsoft Advertising

2.1 – In-market Audiences Now In Beta For The EU Market

In their key product updates blog for January, Microsoft announced that In-market audiences will are available in beta for EU advertisers, with the exception of Belgium. What’s better is that you can import all your In-market audiences from Google with ease as they have updated the import process to accommodate these new changes. More audience options are always a good thing; more data leads to increased optimization.

In addition to the above, Microsoft have expanded the beta for Customer Match audiences to non- UK/EU/China advertisers and said they’re working on a Target Impression Share bid strategy to be released later down the line.

3. Facebook & Instagram

3.1 – Facebook Attribution Window Changes

In October we spoke about the changes to Facebook’s attribution window and how it’ll affect accounts and reporting. This was something that was due to take effect but it seems that for a lot of accounts it was delayed. Only recently have we seen notifications pop up confirming that these attribution changes have taken place. Below is a slightly amended version of what we wrote.

Due to changes in digital privacy, Facebook will be removing the 28-day attribution window option and will instead offer a 7-day window, which they claim is a more sustainable measurement strategy. We can’t stress just how necessary data is for advertising so it’s disheartening news to hear. Any historical account data before these changes will remain. During this transition, you may find your reports showing a downturn in performance, although it’s important to note that this may likely be down to how results are measured.

3.2 – iOS 14

iOS 14 has shaken up Facebook, causing a lot of advertisers to panic. However, it’s not all doom and gloom as according to a leading expert, certain conversions will still be recognized, even if an Apple user decides to opt-out of tracking. You’ll still lose out on a lot of other useful data that will be important to optimizing accounts but Facebook will still at least be able to track purchase or lead conversion events.

January Resolutions

Smart bidding and audiences have been the main focus for Google & Microsoft this past month, with new bid limits and data exclusion periods to help compensate for poor results and more audience tools to expand our targeting. Meanwhile, Facebook appears to have timed their attribution window changes in line with iOS 14 permission updates, potentially as a way to mitigate the length of data inconsistency.

Dec 2020 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo

To finalize this ambivalent year, the latest updates round off what the platforms have been building on for these last few months. Machine learning has pushed accounts forward, market demand has been record breaking and audience engagement is now more important than ever. Our strategy is governed by the resources available and all eyes are transfixed on what the next year has to bring.

1. Google Ads

Explanations Expand To Target CPA

Explanations is a new feature to Google Ads, previously in beta, that gives you additional insights regarding your campaigns and performance factors, such as bid adjustments affecting devices. We’ve seen these appear more and more in our tROAS campaigns to great benefit and now the feature will start showing for tCPA campaigns. This additional information is invaluable when strategizing forward, especially around the holiday season where budgets tend to shift.

Google Ads Editor v1.5

Google Ads Editor is a favorite of ours given how much you can do on the platform compared to the sluggish Google Ads web app interface. New updates provide new opportunities and with the recent v1.5 release we have access to more recommendations, ad strength for RSAs, and image extensions. Whilst the application is still lacking important insights such as Explanations above, the ability to filter for new metrics and make changes efficiently is always a big bonus.

2. Microsoft Advertising

Mixed Campaigns & Data Retention Changes

Microsoft added mixed campaigns to their platform, allowing you to combine both regular ad groups and dynamic ad groups into one sole campaign. This has a lot of potential, especially taking into account smart bidding and campaign goals, which both ad group types will be able to contribute toward. Whether you choose to combine your ad groups or keep them separate as not to skew metrics is entirely your call but for accounts with a smaller budget, this could be huge.

In the same update, Microsoft also announced increases to their data retention window for Universal Event Tracking with data being able to be retained for 390 days, compared to 180 days which it was previously. You will need to update the membership duration of your remarketing lists in order to take advantage of this increase.

3. Facebook & Instagram

Preparing For iOS 14

With the release of Apple’s iOS 14 update, they announced their AppTrackingTransparency framework in the fight for data privacy, which required apps to show the user how their tracking information is being used, specifically if that information is being sent elsewhere, which they can deny. It came as a tough blow to advertising platforms with Facebook including these prompts from January 2021. To combat this, they have provided an update on how they are adapting to this framework, alongside a range of advice on how to prepare your accounts.

Shopping Now On Whatsapp

With many businesses utilizing Whatsapp for their customers, Facebook are continuously releasing new features to cater for more efficient engagement. The latest update makes it easier to shop with ‘Carts’. Through Carts, you can browse the items you’re looking for and add products to your basket, ready to be sent back to the retailer. Given that Whatsapp is one of the most used and loved social media platforms in the world, this is incredibly powerful, it’s just a shame it didn’t come sooner.

A Quiet December

It’s been a quiet December for updates given how much the platforms have worked to accommodate the demand that 2020 brought. Still, there is continued focus to provide more tools for advertisers, with Google expanding their insights for tCPA campaigns, Microsoft increasing their data retention windows, and Facebook giving Whatsapp a shopping facelift.

This year has been a tough one for advertisers and has yet brought many opportunities with businesses adapting to online sales. Throughout this year we’ve seen many smart bidding success stories, free product listings available for retailers and more insights than we know what to do with. We hope you have enjoyed this year’s tech updates and wish you the best as we go into the near year.

Nov 2020 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo: New in Google, Microsoft & Facebook

As we close towards the end of this rather unusual year, changes are being made to prepare for 2021 in what could be an even bigger opportunity for e-commerce. We’ve seen many businesses adapting their main source of income to online platforms and consumers changing their spending habits in tandem. The market is full of amazing potential, these new features help us capitalize on that.

1. Google Ads

1.1 – Enhanced Tools For Campaign Creation

Expansion is something we all do within Google Ads and campaign creation is a big part of that. Whilst we all have checks to ensure that the right settings are there, it helps to have a system there to keep you informed of any tips or potential errors. That’s why Google have introduced new tools for creating campaigns, allowing you to do so in confidence.

1.2 – Auction Insights Now Available For Report Editor

The report editor is something many of us utilize as it’s a handy way of compiling metrics, segmenting by desired dimensions. You can now access auction insights to these reports, although the number of metrics you can attach to them is limited, similar to accessing auction insights data within Data Studio. Still, the additional layout options that report editor provides is a handy way of analyzing competition within the Google Ads platform.

1.3 – Simulated Insights For Smart Bidding

We’ve recently seen in some of our accounts a new feature for simulating budgets, Target CPA & Target ROAS changes. You can now see the effect changing these targets will have on your account for up to the next 90 days with some incredibly powerful forecasting that also, quite handily, caters for seasonality. We’re hoping this update gets rolled out across all accounts as it’s a great tool for future strategy.

On top of that, there are improvements to the platform, such as the ability to view recommendations within the bid strategy report, or view average target CPA/ROAS in the campaigns tab. Also, for search campaigns, you can hover over conversions to get an estimate of future conversions, after taking into account time lag. Little quality of life improvements like these are handy for efficiently navigating through the busy platform.

2. Microsoft Advertising

2.1 – Promotion Extensions For Microsoft Advertising

As Microsoft Ads continues to bring its platform up to date with the competition, the newest & more welcome addition is the ability to create promotion extensions to go alongside your ads. These extensions, much like Google’s, allow you to set defined promotions between a date range and even select the occasion. These are invaluable for seasonal periods such as Black Friday & Christmas, adding hugely beneficial information to your ads, increasing the likelihood of someone engaging.

2.2 – Recommendations, Keyword Planner & More

Continuing with their platform improvements, Microsoft announced a range of new features starting with updates to the Keyword Planner, giving more effective keyword suggestions and even allowing the opportunity to scrape URLs for more keyword opportunities. This has the core of dynamic search ads but built for a very proactive approach towards search campaigns. It will be interesting to see how these suggestions turn out.

What was a major update for Google Ads has now made its way to Microsoft, that being recommendations. Whether you have agreed or disagreed with some of the strategy tips recommendations have made in the past (more budget please), there’s always valuable information to give and insights to report on. Having the ability to access that in Microsoft Ads is a huge boost to the platform and one many advertisers will take advantage of.

3. Facebook & Instagram

3.1 – Branded Content For Instagram Reels

Recently, we talked about Instagram’s Reels, how they’re fighting Tiktok for competition, and the potential this format could have for advertisers. Well, it’s just got even better. You can use branded content tags to promote your business through Reels, with Live on the horizon. In a world where social media influencers are plenty, this brings about more options at your disposal.

In addition, there’s a more streamlined process for brands to incorporate their ads into creator content. No longer do you have to rely on an organic post, now using the new Creation Flow, advertisers can initialize the setup with the creator accepting the terms and posting to their feed. It’s a lovely bit of synergy that brings collaboration together in a much smoother fashion.

An Insightful November

The further we go down the path of smart bidding, the more insights we are rewarded with. This month Google & Microsoft have brought us more reporting options, proactive tools, and forecasting models to help strategize accounts towards a better future. Finally, we have Instagram providing tools to help advertisers and content creators work together for a seamless branding experience that benefits all parties.

For more information on Mabo and their paid advertising management services, please visit Mabo.co.uk.

Oct 2020 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo: New in Google Ads & Facebook

Artificial intelligence is bringing about a golden age of technological divination, opening up insights that predict futures and trends that shape the market. Advanced machine learning models change the way we work, always learning and adapting, providing us with an accurate array of digestible data. The latest features from this month include new tools to give advertisers the ability to tap into that unrelenting power.

1. Google Ads

1.1 – Google Insights Page & Performance Max Bidding

Google’s announced two additions to the Ads platform in their recent Advertising Week roundup. The Insights page, which initially will be available as a beta, will prove key trends and account information to help accounts push in those areas. It may show an interest in a certain product range, or forecast future growth opportunities which you will be able to optimize towards. It goes without saying just how incredibly useful this feature will be, allowing you to catch the latest trends in time and build your strategy around them.

Performance Max campaigns will serve as an addition to Search campaigns, helping find the signals that ultimately lead to a conversion. They will allow you to focus on several goals such as new customer acquisitions which will give the option to assign additional conversion value, calculated from the potential future revenue. However you intend to choose your goals and accompanying value, we’re receiving yet another tool to expand our already diverse toolkit.

1.2 – Data-Driven Attribution Changes

Attribution modeling has always been a hugely important part of accounts, and getting the right model can play a huge role in an account’s performance. The Data-Driven model is excellent as it’s unique to each account, using advanced learning to find the ads which had the highest impact for each conversion.

Fortunately, the data requirements for an account to be eligible for data-driven attribution have reduced to a minimum of 3,000 ad interactions and at least 300 conversions in the past 30 days; that’s down from 15,000 ad interactions and 600 conversion events in the past 30 days. Google have updated their support article with these changes.

In addition to this change, Youtube metrics have now been included in attribution reports so that you can see how much video metrics play a part in conversions, further expanding opportunities for advertisers. This is currently in beta so you’ll have to opt in to take advantage and to put the cherry on top, Google have mentioned that they’ve got plans to include Display ads in the upcoming months.

1.3 – Google Local Services Ads Now Available In Europe

Google introduced Google Local Services Ads a while ago, allowing users to find local businesses, book appointments & more. These ads initially came to US & Canadian audiences however they’ve recently expanded to include a host of European countries including the UK, France & Germany. With a focus on home service industries, such as plumbing or electricians, these unique ads are ideal for lead generation with the added ‘Google Guaranteed’ bonus.

1.4 – Google Analytics 4

The new update for Google Analytics utilizes the same machine learning, which has successfully powered the Ads platform, provides smarter data insights to push for success. Similar to the Insights page for Ads, these new insights can give access to current trends and user demand, alongside predictive metrics that can project the amount of revenue a group of customers can bring, producing new opportunities for custom audiences. It will also give deeper access to a customer’s journey, how they discovered your brand and how they engage with your content. It’s safe to say these new features, which require you need to create a new view to access, will be pivotal to anyone wanting to analyze their traffic.

2. Facebook & Instagram

2.1 – Facebook Attribution Window Changes

Due to changes in digital privacy, Facebook will be removing the 28-day attribution window option and will instead offer a 7-day window, which they claim is a more sustainable measurement strategy. We can’t stress just how necessary data is for advertising so it’s disheartening news to hear. These changes came into effect from the 12th of October; however, any historical account data will remain. During this transition, you may find your reports showing a downturn in performance, although it’s important to note that this may likely be down to how results are measured.

2.2 – Facebook’s New Language Model

The team behind Facebook’s incredible AI have announced significant changes to the way language is processed, moving forward to their multilingual machine translation model (MMT). Whereas before, the translation model used English as the connective language due to the extent of English data that’s available. The new model, named M2M-100, cuts out the English connection allowing for 2,200 language directions improving how the meaning of the original text is conveyed. This change brings for more accurate translations with a model that’s continually improving in a world that’s getting closer every day.

October’s Attribution To Success

This month’s changes seem to be heavily focused on attribution changes with Google now including Youtube into attribution reports and reducing the limitations for accounts to take on the data-driven model. To contrast that, Facebook have reduced their attribution window from 28 to 7 days but have at least updated their ad policies allowing for more lenient creatives. Finally, Google Analytics has seen a new update to bring in advanced machine learning features, a massive benefit to all platforms.

For more information on Mabo and their paid advertising management services, please visit Mabo.co.uk.

Sep 2020 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo: Google Limits Search Terms & More

As we come to the end of Q3, preparations are underway to take advantage of the seasonal peaks to maximize on this upcoming potential. The ability to access a monumental amount of data is our biggest ally in the battle for profitability. New updates can come as a rallying cry of innovation or a new hurdle to surpass; the way we react to these changes can be a defining attribute for any advertiser.

1. Google Ads

1.1 – Google reducing visibility for search terms

In a heavily disputed move, Google announced on the Ads platform that they will start hiding low-traffic search terms, only showing high-traffic results. To confirm, even if that term received a click, it might not show up.

Data is king in this industry, whatever the amount, so this move has received some rather negative feedback. According to Google, this is a move to support privacy and protect user data, which seems slightly hypocritical considering how many user signals are tracked and used for smart bidding.

1.2 – In-market audiences available for shopping campaigns

Google’s latest CSS newsletter has announced that in-market audiences have officially been launched for Shopping campaigns, a hugely welcome feature for many of us. With smart bidding taking away a lot of optimization opportunities, audiences are now more critical than ever given that you can still enhance your smart bidding through adjustments. Additional audiences bring more options for you to optimize your bidding, allowing you to utilize that data tweak your bidding on a more granular level.

1.3 – Create rules more efficiently in merchant center

Feed rules have become even easier to do in the Merchant Center. You can add multiple words and phrases within a single rule with new options giving access to ‘any of’ variants, such as ‘contains any of’. Gone are the days of arduously creating a rule for each query to action on; quality-of-life improvements like these are a real step forward for user efficiency.

2. Microsoft Ads

2.1 – Dynamic Remarketing & more

One of the best additions this month comes from Microsoft, giving us a huge boost just in time for the holiday season with some powerful audience features.

Dynamic Remarketing is now accessible for advertisers, allowing you to target your audience with the very products they’ve been viewing; a perfect fit for Black Friday, Christmas and more. Go one step further with LinkedIn Profile Targeting, giving you a unique approach to create custom audiences based on a user’s company, job function and industry.

Finally, in-market audiences are now available for both France and Germany.

3. The Digital Services Tax (gov.uk publication)

3.1 – Google parrying the new tax

Google’s answer to tackling the new DST fees is one that’s come with shock, with them imposing the tax onto the advertiser’s bill as a percentage of spend. Initially affecting the UK, Austria and Turkey, the fees will start as of November 1 with a straight 2% of a UK account’s monthly spend being added onto the bill, rising to 5% for Austria & Turkey accounts.

Although this fee impacts all businesses, it does seem exceptionally harsh to SMEs, having just dealt with the economic repercussions of lockdown.

3.2 – Amazon following suit

Amazon has followed the same approach as Google by forwarding the new tax onto its sellers, their justification being that they absorbed the DST whilst the legislation was in the process of being passed. The fees for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) will increase by 2% as of September 1 and 15, respectively.

3.3 – Facebook’s heroic response

Facebook has a history of sour representation given David Fincher’s powerful 2010 drama and congressional hearing that sprouted several unflattering memes. Yet in an inspiring move, they have announced their intention to absorb the new tax so that it’s not passed onto sellers.

We’re seeing a rare glimpse of ethical responsibility coming from Facebook in a bold act that will surely improve their image.

A controversial September

This September is one that advertisers may hope to forget. Despite Google bringing some practical updates, they’ve also included some revisions which are arguably more detrimental to the ads platform. Amazon continues to be frugal and Facebook is taking an unexpected moral high ground, though we’re yet to hear any official word from Microsoft.

Unlike the last two months showering us with utility updates, this month hasn’t been half as fruitful.

For more information on Mabo and their paid advertising management services, please visit Mabo.co.uk.

Omnisend’s 8 Best Practices for Shopify App Advertising in 2020

Among the main contributors to Shopify’s growth are the multitude of apps available on its platform. Indeed, some of the top Shopify apps make it easier to develop, grow, and maintain online businesses. But how do you use them to advertise your e-commerce store and grow your revenues in today’s business environment? Here are some of the best practices you should employ this year:

1. Prioritize personalization

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/omnisend

It’s critical for today’s consumer to feel a connection with the brands that they patronize. So, whenever you reach out to your customers, make sure that it’s with a highly relevant message.

There are apps that seamlessly plug into your Shopify store that give you incredible personalization options. Such software allow you to segment your subscriber base in great detail in order to reach out to them with highly converting messages. With the right tool, you’ll be able to target your customers not merely based on their profile data but also their specific activities or shopping behaviors.

2. Focus on customer retention

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/swell

Acquiring customers is much more expensive than retaining the ones you already have. Plus, it has a greater impact on your bottomline. In fact, even a 5% increase in your customer retention rate can boost your profits by up to 95%.

One of the best ways to cultivate customer loyalty is to maintain a compelling rewards program. By rewarding your customers for every interaction with your brand, you’ll easily boost repeat purchases and strengthen relationships with your customers. All it takes is finding the best Shopify app to integrate into your store.

3. Recover abandoned carts

Source: https://www.invespcro.com/blog/the-top-7-reasons-for-shopping-cart-abandonment-tips-for-avoiding-them/

About 7 out of 10 of shoppers on your store will fill up their carts without checking out. Often, that happens either because of unexpected shipping costs or they’re simply not yet ready to purchase. But no matter the reason, it pays to lure these shoppers back in.

Some Shopify apps allow you to build automation workflows that identify cart abandoners and re-engage them through personalized and targeted messages. This allows you to revive what would have already been lost sales. You can also recover abandoned carts by setting up exit-intent pop-ups as well as retargeting ads.

4. Engage in retargeting

Source: https://www.business2community.com/marketing/17-retargeting-ad-statistics-will-make-retarget-right-now-2-infographics-01464774

Retargeting can be useful not just for cart abandoners but also for window shoppers, which are common even in e-commerce. The good news is that there are digital tools that allow you several chances to convert online window shoppers into actual paying customers. This makes a significant impact on your revenues, as window shoppers are 70% more likely to convert with retargeting.

With Shopify apps, you can easily run retargeting campaigns on sites like Facebook, Google, and their properties (e.g. Instagram, Youtube, and Gmail). These allow you to integrate your shop data and manage your entire marketing strategy on a single platform and drive traffic to your Shopify store.

Source: https://sixads.net/blog/shopify-traffic-channels-generating-sales/

5. Optimize for mobile

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/shopney-mobile-app

Transactions on mobile devices are expected to make up at least 50% of all ecommerce sales. So, it’s essential that you have a platform that’s optimized for the mobile audience. That means making sure you have an incredibly responsive website. Or, if it makes sense for your business, you can build your own native app.

Mobile app builders on Shopify make creating your own native mobile app remarkably easy. These software don’t just make it easy to develop your brand’s ecommerce app but also provides everything you need to offer a good mobile customer experience. Typically, that includes features like simplified checkout process, in-app messaging, and rich push notifications. When you are planning to improve your ecommerce business, mobile should be on priority list.

6. Make the most of social proof

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/loox

User reviews are valued by 88% of shoppers just as much as personal recommendations. Given this, it pays to use the reviews you already have not only on your social media pages but also everywhere else you can manage. These are especially valuable on your product pages.

Shopfiy apps allow you to easily integrate social proof like user photos and product reviews onto your product pages. By using these apps, you make your web visitors more likely to complete a purchase.

7. Produce interactive content

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/pickzen

Interactive content like quizzes and questionnaires is one of the most effective lead magnets for retail websites. This advertising tactic has an average lead capture rate of 31.6%.

Apart from engaging quizzes, among the best ways to use this tool is to produce questionnaires that lead to highly relevant product recommendations. Shopify apps don’t just make it easier for you to create these interactive content but also capture data and gather insights from your users.

8. Host engaging contests

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/gleam

A chance at winning enticing prizes can be an excellent motivation for your customer to help you grow your audience and boost your brand’s popularity. If planned correctly, hosting contests can also be a cost-effective advertising tactic.

Today, there are Shopify apps that allow you to easily create online competitions or giveaways. These tools provide everything you need not just to develop and run your contests but also to pick winners, verify entries, and capture data.

Conclusion

Shopify has enabled hundreds of thousands of businesses to reach online audiences. Its success as an ecommerce platform is undoubtedly driven by its versatility. It is simple enough for novices to navigate but also dynamic enough for experienced digital retailers to get exactly what they need.

But to really make the most out of the platform, you should learn to identify the best Shopify apps to support your business. Take advantage of them to advertise your shop, grow your audience, and nurture your customers. Consequently, you’ll enjoy incredible revenue growth as well as a stellar brand reputation.

Regular Pages

5 Ways to Reduce Ecommerce Fulfillment Costs Without Sacrificing Quality

Having a cost-effective business can help aid your PPC campaign efforts. How? By saving money in different aspects of your business, you can set aside the additional funds to go towards your campaigns.

Businesses will consider cutting production costs or thinking about the quality of their products. But, fulfillment is normally the one thing that often gets overlooked.

An ideal fulfillment partner will help your business save money. Reducing fulfillment costs allows you to allocate funds to your PPC campaign. For fulfillment, there are different aspects that can be cost-efficient for your business.

In this article, we discuss how to reduce fulfillment costs without sacrificing quality or customer experience.

1. Inventory Accuracy

Inventory accuracy is what you would think it means. It refers to inventory inaccuracies between your physical inventory and what is in your records. For most businesses that work through a 3PL provider, it would refer to the inconsistencies you might have with the inventory management software and what is actually in stock, whether it’s in the warehouse or in your store.

By keeping an accurate count of your inventory, you can reduce unneeded costs. How? First, you can reduce the number of purchases from your supplier. For example, you might see that you’re low on a best-selling item, so your instinct is to submit another order to your supplier. But, what if your inventory numbers actually were off? This could result in additional spending that was ultimately not needed.

Second, you can potentially reduce labor costs. By working with an inventory management system or a fulfillment provider that already has one, you can accurately keep track of your order and not spend hours manually counting all your items. Allowing you to allocate the additional labor costs you might have used to manually count your inventory to your marketing efforts, like your PPC campaign.

Inventory accuracy can also help with the promises you made on your website and in your ads. For example, you might create ads around on-time delivery and customer satisfaction. If your customers aren’t getting their packages on time, this can show your customers that you aren’t fulfilling your promises.

Keeping your inventory as accurate as possible allows for a few mistakes when it comes to delays. By seeing that a particular item is starting to run low on your warehouse shelves, you can be proactive by ordering more products. This in turn reduces the need for your customers to wait for a restock of their favorite item.x

However, a Campaign Automator can present customers with great alternatives and perhaps still make a purchase from your site when your items are low on stock.

Lastly, it can help guide ad efforts by helping you decide on which product to promote. If you have items that have been collecting dust on your shelves, it can be a motivator for you to create a campaign around them allowing you to reduce your storage costs at your warehouse.

On the flip side of this, you can also see how fast a product is selling and create a campaign to generate even more sales and revenue for your business.

2. Inventory Shrinkage

Inventory shrinkage plays a part in inventory accuracy. Inventory shrinkage ultimately explains why your inventory might not be accurate. Unfortunately, it’s unavoidable to have some amount of shrinkage. Why? It really boils down to three main root causes — employee theft, lost goods, and damaged goods.

Similar to inventory accuracy, missing inventory increases costs for your business. However, inventory shrinkage can be reduced. By working with a fulfillment provider that implements measures to reduce shrinkage, you can save money. However, you can even implement these measures yourself.

Here are measures you or your fulfillment provider can take to ensure inventory shrinkage is avoided:

By implementing these measures, you can avoid damaged, lost, or stolen inventory. Reducing the amount of money you spend on replacing items.

3. Better Rates with Carriers

The benefit of working with a fulfillment provider is better carrier rates. The rates you receive when working with national carriers aren’t the same as what 3PLs receive. 3PL providers work one-on-one with national carriers to get the best deals possible for both businesses.

In most cases, the right 3PL provider for your business can reduce shipping costs per item — enabling you to compete on price. By receiving better shipping costs, you use the additional spend you would save towards your PPC campaign.

You also have the opportunity to reduce product costs allowing for you to have a potential lead on your competition. But, you might ask fulfillment companies to get better deals on shipping. As mentioned before, fulfillment providers have one-on-one relationships with national carriers, but that is not all.

The first reason is package volume. Since normal fulfillment providers have dozens of brands and products sitting on their shelves, national carriers are constantly coming through the warehouse to pick up items instead of visiting one store a few times a month.

The second reason is contracts. Each 3PL creates contracts with the national carriers at the beginning of the year. These contracts involve negotiations and deals to ensure that the fulfillment’s clients get the best deals possible.

4. Packaging Supplies

Another way fulfillment can be cost-effective and allow for your PPC campaign to grow is the packaging. Fulfillment companies know packaging. It’s their job.

By offering different size boxes and infill options, fulfillment companies can help you find the right packaging system for your company.

You might not think it can reduce costs, but finding the perfect box for your products is essential. Why? The wrong size of your box could create additional costs for your business. Most national carriers rely on DIM weight over actual weight; however, both are used.

DIM weight vs actual weight

DIM or dimensional weight is a formula used by carriers to determine the price based on the volume of the package. By using this formula, carriers are able to add in box size rather than just weight. The actual weight is just that — the actual weight of your package.

As mentioned before, carriers use both options to determine the billable weight, but it’s more of an either-or scenario. If your box is heavier than the DIM weight calculation, you will be charged for the actual weight of the package. If your DIM weight is more than your actual weight, then you will be charged based on the DIM weight instead.

The issue businesses will run into is picking a larger box for a smaller item. This in turn increases your shipping cost. By picking the correct box, you will pay the appropriate amount for shipping and not run into additional shipping costs.

Green Packaging

Did you know that 64% of Americans spend more on green products? If you sell green products, why not go the extra mile with green packaging? For some fulfillment companies like Red Stag Fulfillment, the leftover cardboard is turned into infill — reducing the number of times plastic infill is used. It helps the environment and also reduces costs on infill.

5. Increase Customer Orders

If you work with a fulfillment provider, you can gain customer loyalty. Having your packages arrive on time and intact, it can make your customers happy. Happy customers increase customer loyalty.

Accurate and on-time deliveries can make or break a customer’s buying journey. It might sound a little extreme but think back to your recent delivery that was late. How did you feel about the brand as you anxiously waited for the delivery? You might not have been too happy.

For some people, it could convince them to hold off on ordering from that brand for a while or ever again. However, a package that comes on time and in great condition can persuade your customer to come back to your site.

By increasing happy customers, you could see an increase in orders which in turn allows you to have more revenue to plan campaigns based on your marketing strategy.

Conclusion

By turning to fulfillment, you can look at ways to be more cost-effective and allow you to add additional funds to your PPC campaign or even create new ones. So, it’s important to look for an ideal partner that cares about your inventory and delivery standards.

You might see a complete change in available funds when making your fulfillment cost-effective, but a little goes a long way when it comes to PPC campaigns.

This is a guest post by Jake Rheude, Vice President of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment.

About the author:

Jake Rheude is the Vice President of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

Want to Increase Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate? Learn the 5 Factors That Influence It.

Are you looking for a helpful guide on how to increase ecommerce conversions? You’ve landed on the right page. But before we dive in, let’s quickly cover the basics.

What is Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

Ecommerce conversion rate is a metric that is calculated by dividing the total number of site visitors by the number of conversions. Because it’s a key metric for your store’s success, it pays to invest as much time and resources as possible into its optimization.

How To Measure Ecommerce Conversion Rate

You need two values to get your website’s conversion rate — the number of conversions and the total number of visitors. You can get both values from Google Analytics.

Here’s a simple formula for determining your website’s conversion rate:

Conversion Rate = (# Of Conversions ÷ Total # Of Visitors) x 100

For example, the number of conversions is 10 and the total number of visitors is 100, this will be the equation:

conversion rate = (10 ÷ 100) x 100

conversion rate = (0.1) x 100

conversion rate = 10

​​​​​​​What Is A Good Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

You might be wondering: what is a good average conversion rate for an ecommerce store? The short answer is that it depends on your market.

Omniconvert recently ran a study to determine the average conversion rates for the most popular ecommerce niches, and here’s what they found:

But while it’s fine to settle with a good conversion rate by this definition, it’s a sweeter deal to go beyond the average. This grants you the opportunity to outperform your competition and generate higher income.

For example, if the average conversion rate in your industry is between 0.90% to 1.00%, it’s best to aim for a higher figure — 2.50% (or above).

5 Factors That Influence Ecommerce Conversions

To help you achieve a conversion rate that’s better than the average, take note of the factors that can affect the increase in conversions.

1. Product-Audience Fit

The product-audience fit refers to market demand (or lack thereof) for your product. And achieving product-audience fit is among the pillars of a successful business.

If you achieve product-audience fit, it means the market is on your side. There’s demand for your product, and you know how to reach the right type of customers searching for it.

Here are tips on how you can achieve a product-audience fit:

2. Order And Payment Forms Design

Your order and payment forms’ design is also one of the reasons a customer might decide whether or not they want to pursue buying your product. If your form makes the order and payment processes difficult for them, a potential customer is likely to leave your website before completing a purchase.

Here are the elements in a form that make things difficult for online shoppers:

Image source

If your order and payment forms aren’t optimized for mobile, you have another problem to fix.

According to different studies, the conversion rates on non-responsive forms dip quite significantly. Considering that a big segment of shoppers prefers to use their mobile phones to make purchases, the responsiveness of your forms could make or break your business.

Here are more tips for designing order and payment forms:

3. Supported Payment Methods

Payment gateways are merchant services that process payments for ecommerce stores. They’re a vital part of your website because, without them, your customers can’t send you payments.

This is also why it’s important to choose a trustworthy payment gateway that your customers would find easy to use.

The most popular high-quality payment gateways are:

A concern is, that there could still be security vulnerabilities involved even if you choose high-quality payment gateways. Malware issues, data breaches, and incidents of fraudulent hacking are possibilities — and they’re out of your control. The solution? Be aware of them and seek protection in advance.

Here are the best practices for choosing supported payment gateways:

Giving customers alternative payment options can also influence conversions. That’s because even if some payment gateways are more popular and commonly used, there are customers who’d find it more convenient to transfer money using other methods.

Here are some alternative payment options:

4. Trust Badges

Trust badges are visual symbols that you can add to your website that confirm the trustworthiness of your business. For an ecommerce website, gaining the trust of customers is of paramount importance.

Image Source

As the image below shows, one of the reasons for cart abandonment is the lack of trust that customers have in an ecommerce website. Notably, the bar chart shows that 17% of cart abandonments happen because a customer doesn’t trust the site.

Image Source

A fair way to look at this situation is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. If you’re about to buy from a website, wouldn’t you feel secure if it had a trust badge?

Here are facts about using trust badges:

Below are the main types of trust badges.

One concern is that there could still be security vulnerabilities involved even if you choose high-quality payment gateways. Malware issues, data breaches, and incidents of fraudulent hacking are possibilities — and they’re out of your control, even more so when you do not protect your devices from prominent threats.

The solution? Be aware of them and seek protection in advance.

5. Customer Support

Customer support can make or break your business. If your customer support works like a well-oiled machine, you’ll see your website’s conversion rates skyrocket. But if you won’t bother making customers feel like they can rely on you, the rate will go down.

Aside from raising conversions, here are the other reasons customer support is important:

The most effective channels for customer support are phone (VoIP phone system) and live chat. Their main advantage over email is that the conversations are happening in the real-time, solving customer problems as they arise.

Here are more approaches you can take to deliver impressive customer support:

Conclusion

Remember that in order to increase your ecommerce conversion rates, you need to focus on optimizing different functions and areas of your business. After all, conversions are just a reflection of how likely the customers are to purchase products through your website.

Persuade them that it’s a good idea, make this process easy and fun, and later delight them post-purchase — and you’ll do just great!

This is a guest post by Vlad Shvets, the growth manager at Paperform.

A Proven 5-Step Communication Model To Win Client Buy-In

Communication is what we do as marketers and as human beings. It’s the heart of how we relate to each other and create trust. Having a communication model you trust can make a world of difference to client satisfaction and longevity.

“Not happy with communication” ranks as a top reason clients leave agencies or partners. Good communication aims to unlock value and remove ambiguity from all stakeholders.

The 2018 Salesforce “State of Service” report found that 80% of customers say the experience a business provides is just as important as their product or service – a number that’s not likely gone down since.

In my nine years formulating digital media solutions for clients from many verticals, including travel, finance, automotive, retail, pharma, electronics, entertainment, and CPG, this 5-step framework helped me communicate with purpose and achieve maximum potential gains with my clients and teams:

Step 1: Listen

As marketing experts, it is very tempting to start formulating solutions and judgments while expressing the task or idea. Practice active listening without judging or developing an opinion.

Appreciate how the idea was formulated. Lastly, pay attention to your client’s body language; what are people telling you with their eyes or facial expressions?

Step 2: Paraphrase

Repeat & summarize what you think you have heard. This ensures you understand the task and gives the client a chance to confirm or offer additional information.

Step 3: Test

Paraphrase but change a few variables deliberately. See if the result of the paraphrase is consistent. Testing ensures no unmissed subtleties and helps remove ambiguity. It is also used to unlock the truths about the matter.

This is also your chance to ask questions. We ask questions to learn and create connections. Asking the right questions will cut through the clutter, find the argument’s weaknesses, and get a new sense of direction or insights.

It should reveal someone’s motivation and shed light on the end goal.

Simple and direct questions usually get you the best answers. Often, people end up rambling or derail from the question, so it is crucial to be persistent and patient while holding them accountable.

Step 4: Suggest

Use the facts you learned from the previous step to know where the opportunity is and what the client wants to do. This is the opportunity to let your expertise and professionalism shine.

Use the information you’ve gathered from the test phase to make the most efficient & effective recommendation to meet client goals.

Step 5: Agree & Apply

At the end of the conversation, ideas may have shifted, and new concepts evolved. End the conversation with an agreement. The agreement is now in place, so apply any new findings immediately.

Let’s look at this in an actual example and see the five steps in action:

Example

It’s a Thursday afternoon, you are near the end of a client WIP. You are about to wrap up, and the main client suddenly asks for a bunch of stuff.

“We have a few promotions going on, and I want to support them with some paid search activity. The previous manager said to follow the set up of old campaigns, and I want it to go live tomorrow morning.”

Now let’s try the five steps.

Step 1: You perform active listening, despite happy hour starting, and you smell the hors d’oeuvre from the community area.

You nod your head make eye contact while giving short verbal confirmations like “I see .”Read the client’s body language. What are they communicating with their face, their arms? Are they closing off or opening up?

Step 2: Paraphrasing can look or sound like:

Step 3: Test

Switch up a few variables in the form of either statements or questions:

While the client relies on our expertise to know the answers to their problems, it is always a better experience when you ask questions to spark the client’s thinking and make them feel like they are forming the solution with you.

Step 4: Suggest

“It sounds like promotion X is the most important. Based on the data from the last sale, I know that the peak revenue happens one week after the promo goes live.”

“Let’s prioritize this tactic, use x audience strategy, and go live with a phased approach. Instead of targeting the whole DMA, why don’t we focus on a few geographies that are our highest selling?”

Step 5: Agree & Apply

Once you align on the plan & next steps, send a follow-up email to recap.

The end goal is that the client should feel like you understand who they are, their business, and what they need to succeed. Often, the client might not even know what they want.

But we, as search experts, can hear what they want, know how to execute strategically, ensure we are on the same page, and finally put it into action.

Use this framework to position yourself as a trusted partner and advisor who can help them solve the problem.

This is a guest post.

About Melissa:

With over 9 years of experience in paid search marketing & having worked in and developed performance media solutions in the USA, New Zealand, Australia, and China, Melissa offers valuable insights across countless markets and verticals. Her exceptional ability as an artist also helps her to inject creativity into a specialism that can often be mechanical. She specializes in unique opportunities to drive business growth by connecting data with creativity and bringing performance strategies to life. Melissa currently works at RPA, an independent LA-based advertising agency.

The Essential Guide to Conducting Effective Keyword Research

Whether you’re a SaaS or Ecommerce business, conducting effective keyword research should be one of your top priorities. Essential to the success of your digital marketing efforts, effective keyword research will give you insight into what kinds of searches your consumers are making, informing your content strategy across all channels.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of discovering and understanding the kind of search queries and keywords your target audience uses when searching for your products or services.

It involves exploring the kinds of keywords that resonate most with your consumers and using keyword research tools to analyze their effectiveness.

Why is keyword research so important?

Effective keyword research is key to your advertising efforts and content creation. Whether you want to run a new marketing campaign or are looking for ways to ramp up your revenue and customer base, keyword research will help you understand what kinds of things your consumers are searching for.

Since keyword research will give you insight into what customers search for, you’ll be able to curate your content and its keywords based on those findings. It can also inform you of your current keyword success rates, giving you a chance to improve or rank higher than your competitors.

You want to be the site consumers come to for their queries and needs, which means getting as close as possible to the top of the first SERP and keyword research can help you get there.

To help you with the ins and outs, we’ve created an essential guide to conducting effective keyword research for your business.

1. Plan ahead and prepare.

To make your keyword research really effective, you have to hone in on your customers. You have to figure out what kinds of things they’re searching for, the keywords they’re most likely to use, and what kind of content you can create to fill their needs.

Consider all your marketing goals and objectives, and align them with the needs of your consumers. Research to understand your target audience, asking questions such as:

· What kinds of services or products are they searching for in your niche?

· What kinds of words and questions do they use when searching?

· What are the locations of your target audience (international or national)?

· Why are they interested in your products and services?

· What kind of content do they prefer?

Once you’ve prepped, you can start focusing on creating keywords that align with your customers’ habits and needs, guiding the kind of content and campaigns you create.

2. Explore and discover keyword ideas.

The first step to conducting effective keyword research is brainstorming new ideas. As well as just looking at customer habits and preferences, you should also do a bit of in-depth research into what keywords your competitors use and explore seed ideas from your niche.

Seed keywords

Often called starter keywords, seeds are the foundation of what your niche and products consist of. They’re usually composed of one to two words and directly relate to what you’re selling – and they’re the very beginning of your keyword research.

When coming up with seeds, think about the kind of keywords related to your industry and what your customers would typically search for. If you sell cakes, for example, some core seed keywords could include:

· Bakery

· Vanilla frosting

· Birthday cake

· Custom cakes

Though useful, it’s important to remember that seed keywords are just your starting point. You won’t necessarily be using these keywords in your content to target consumers, especially if you’re starting out in a competitive market.

These seeds, however, will help you in the later stages of your research, informing how you narrow down which topics to focus on.

Long-tail keywords vs. fat-head keywords

Otherwise known as seeds, fat-head keywords are the short and concise keywords that are the most popular and generic for your niche. On the other hand, long-tail keywords are generally longer search terms that are more specific and narrowed down to a particular topic.

Some examples of long-tail keywords for our imaginary cake shop could include:

· Vegan cakes in Colorado

· Cheesecake shop near me

· Cake decorating store

When doing your research, it’s key you consider whether you’re going to use long-tail or fat-head keywords, but most businesses opt for long-tail. The reason behind this is simple – you want to appear on the first SERP for a phrase you target, but to do so for very popular (fat-head) keywords is likely to take far too much effort and expense.

The most generic and common keywords are highly saturated, so competition is high. You have a better chance of ranking higher with highly specific keywords related to your niche. This goes for keyword research for PPC ads, too.

The more competitive a keyword, the more it’ll cost to beat your rivals to those clicks.

Get into the mind of users.

Another easy way to come up with keywords is by getting in the minds of users and potential customers. As well as thinking of what kind of searches they’re likely to make, do some research yourself!

Have a look at Quora and Reddit for ideas, searching for the most used keywords and phrases in questions within your niche. You might be surprised at what you find, but it could help inform you of what kinds of keywords to include next in your content or ads.

It could also be worth asking your consumers what they search for and what kinds of keywords they’re most likely to use. Consider using outbound telemarketing software and surveys to get in touch with consumers, asking them their most common questions about your products or services so that you can tune your content accordingly.

This will also help show you which topics and areas to hone in on when conducting keyword research.

Look at your competitors.

Take a deep dive into the kinds of keywords your competitors use – and this is where your brainstormed list of seed keywords will come in handy! Use those seeds to inform you of what kind of competition to look at.

If we use the example of our cake shop, we’ll find that we want to stay away from the overly commercialized and popular cake shops and bakeries, such as Greggs (for the UK) or Hummingbird Bakery. You shouldn’t see major players like this as your competitors, instead, look at those on a similar scale to yourself within your direct niche.

Perhaps you specialize in vegan cakes within the Toronto area – zone in on these details and find your competition within these margins. Once you’ve narrowed down your competitors, type in your seeds looking at what businesses come up first on the SERP.

You can then plug the most popular keywords into a site explorer or keyword research tool (more on this later) to find similar keywords to use. These tools will also give you insight into the amount of traffic that these sites are getting from using these keywords, helping you ascertain whether they’re worthwhile to use in your content or not.

3. Use keyword research tools.

One of the easiest ways to discover new keywords is using keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs. These tools will help pull up a list of related keywords for your niche while also showing the ranking factor of each word.

They’re also important for researching the analytics behind each term, something you might already be doing with your Ecommerce analytics for store growth and revenue.

Completely free and easy to use, Google Keyword Planner is great at generating new keyword ideas that use your seed keyword for inspiration while also coming up with its own suggestions.

The Planner will also show you average monthly searches for each term, as well as their competitive rate. This is especially important when deciding whether to use a fat-head or long-tail keyword, as you’ll always want to pick one that’s most specific to your niche, to make it as easy as possible to be as high on the first SERP as you can.

Ahrefs is an equally useful tool but will cost you – it all depends on how serious you are about keyword research. While Google’s tool is more than enough to assist you, Ahrefs goes the extra mile by generating up to one million ideas with extra analytics available.

4. Analyze your keywords.

You must analyze your keyword choices to optimize campaigns and content to see if they’re doing consistently well. We’ve already covered how you can use keyword research tools to understand the intent before choosing keywords, but it’s just as important to check once you’ve implemented them into your content.

Just as you might use call metrics to understand the growth of your call center over time, you should use analytics to understand how many users your content is attracting over a period of time.

5. Incorporate keywords into your content.

Once you’ve completed your research, you can start incorporating your keywords into content and campaigns – experiment with ad types and email marketing to see what kind of content your users prefer. Though keyword success is important, it’s also crucial you use and deliver content in a format that appeals most to consumers.

6. Have the right systems in place.

Make sure you have the right systems and software in place that will allow you to conduct keyword research effectively. If you’ve got a team working on it remotely, ensure they’re equipped with the right marketing automation tools so they can focus on the most important tasks.

You could also consider installing an enterprise network security solution across your systems to protect your data and software. This is especially important if you have staff working in different locations.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author:

Victorio is the Associate SEO Director at RingCentral, a global leader in cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions. He has over 13 years of extensive involvement in web and digital operations with diverse experience as a web engineer, product manager, and digital marketing strategist.

How Can D2C Brands Leverage PPC Ads to Drive Customer Acquisition?

D2C Ecommerce retail is skyrocketing. The global D2C sales have almost doubled in the last two years, and this uptrend is likely to continue. Brands like Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, Casper, and BarkBox are revolutionizing the D2C space.

Consumers are also showing interest in shopping from D2C brands. Over 40% of customer spending is projected to go towards D2C retail. As a result, 78% of D2C brands have increased their marketing budgets.

However, increasing your marketing budget isn’t enough. You need to implement the right marketing strategies to get more sales.

Paid advertising has emerged as one of the most effective marketing strategies for D2C brands. Here is a comprehensive guide that will help you leverage PPC ads to drive customer acquisition.

The D2C Business Landscape and Target Audience

Ecommerce has grown exponentially in the past couple of years. Global retail Ecommerce sales have doubled from $2,982 billion in 2018 to $4,891 billion in 2021. Furthermore, they’re projected to reach $6,388 billion by 2024.

One of the fastest-growing segments within Ecommerce is direct-to-consumer (D2C) retail. D2C Ecommerce sales in the US alone touched $129 billion in 2021 and are likely to reach $175 billion in 2025.

Global Growth of D2C Ecommerce

Several factors are fueling the growth of D2C Ecommerce, including:

These intermediaries charge a commission on every sale, which reduces the brand’s profit margin. D2C eliminates such intermediaries, allowing brands to be more profitable.

This first-party data also allows D2C brands to streamline their marketing campaigns and acquire new customers.

Target Audience for D2C Brands

If you want to run successful, high-performing marketing campaigns, you need to first understand your target audience.

D2C brands primarily rely on digital channels to reach customers and drive sales. Thus, their target audience includes younger consumers that actively use online channels. Three-quarters of the D2C customer base is under the age of 55 years. Millennials and Gen Z readily shop from D2C brands.

There are various reasons younger customers prefer shopping from D2C brands, including:

D2C Sales Funnel and Acquisition Channels

The D2C marketing and sales funnel are similar to the standard marketing funnel. It comprises three stages:

D2C brands can use several channels to reach customers and drive sales. The channel you choose depends on your goals. If you’re looking for a marketing strategy to support your long-term goals, SEO and social media can be effective channels.

If you have short-term goals and want to drive quick sales, paid advertising or PPC advertising is one of your best options. Since many D2C brands focus on getting quick, consistent sales, PPC advertising has emerged as the preferred marketing strategy for them.

How Can Paid Advertising Campaigns Bolster D2C Customer Acquisition?

One of the major reasons to use PPC ads is versatility. You can use them at every stage of the sales funnel. When your prospects are in the TOFU stage, PPC ads help you increase brand and product awareness.

In the consideration stage, PPC ads enable you to filter customers based on their intent and drive engagement. PPC advertising in the BOFU stage is all about getting sales.

Quick entry, versatility, and seamless optimization are some other reasons to use PPC marketing. Unlike SEO that takes months to show results, PPC ads start driving results sooner. This way, D2C brands can promote their products instantaneously and penetrate the market.

PPC ads are highly versatile as you can run them for every awareness stage. You can tailor your content strategy and marketing messages based on customer awareness and positioning, and goals.

Paid ads also offer versatility in terms of ad formats. There are so many paid advertising formats:

Additionally, PPC ads are measurable and trackable. You can set and track key performance indicators (KPIs) of each ad campaign to determine how it’s performing. This also paves the way for A/B testing — running two versions of an ad simultaneously to determine which one performs better.

This trackability and scope for experimentation make PPC ads an excellent alternative to print ads and physical advertisements that are usually not easy to measure.

Note: There is a smart way to make your print ads, billboards, and other physical advertisements measurable — using QR codes. All you need to do is create a QR code, link it to the target URL, and place it on your ad. Users can scan the code from their smartphone to engage with it.

QR codes are trackable, and you can see how many times your code has been scanned and from which location and device.

Leveraging Google PPC Ads for D2C Customer Acquisition

Paid advertising is beneficial for D2C brands, but it’s also competitive. Almost every D2C brand uses paid ads to increase awareness and boost customer acquisition.

So how can you stand out in a saturated market?

Here are four steps you can take to effectively use PPC ads for increasing customer acquisition, retention, and revenue.

1. Planning Ad Campaigns Based on Your Marketing Strategy

The first step in setting up a paid ad campaign is to formulate a marketing strategy that includes reaching prospects across awareness stages. Let’s look at how you can use paid ads for each awareness stage.

Top of the Funnel

In the TOFU stage, your aim should be to create brand awareness and educate people about your brand and the products you sell. Display ads enable broad interest targeting, and hence, they’re best suited for building awareness.

You can also use social media ads and search ads to engage people at the top of the funnel.

Middle of the Funnel

Customers in the middle of the funnel are aware of your product but aren’t yet ready to buy. At this stage, your ads should focus on instilling confidence in their minds. You can do that by sharing case studies and testimonials. You can also promote the benefits you offer, like a “free 30-day money-back guarantee.”

Remarketing is effective at this stage. In remarketing, you show ads to people who visited your website or a product page but didn’t complete a purchase. Retargeting ads can help nurture these prospects and push them further down the funnel. Besides, retargeting ads have a 10x higher CTR than traditional display ads.

Targeting rivals is another useful approach in the MOFU stage. It’s an aggressive advertising strategy where you target potential customers searching for your competitors. The idea behind this strategy is to show the customers what you offer is better than what your competitors provide.

Bottom of the Funnel

The final stage is the bottom of the funnel, where your only objective is to convert a prospect into a customer. At this stage, you can leverage branded search campaigns, high-intent search ads, Google Shopping ads, and retargeting.

2. Tracking Ad Campaign Performance

In the previous section, we delved deep into developing a paid advertising strategy based on the awareness stage and your marketing goals. Now, let’s discuss the KPIs you can measure to track the performance of your ad campaigns.

The KPIs are different for each awareness stage.

TOFU

MOFU

BOFU

By combining all these metrics, you can track the performance of your ad campaigns accurately.

3. Optimizing Ad Campaigns to Boost Conversions

Now that you know which metrics to track, let’s understand how you can optimize your ad campaigns using these KPIs to boost conversions. We’ll pick a use case from each funnel stage for better understanding.

Let’s start with the TOFU stage. Suppose you run a display ad campaign that gets a lot of impressions but hardly any clicks (low CTR). It could be an indication that your ad isn’t catchy enough. Changing the image, headline, or description of the ad can help.

When you show ads to prospects in the MOFU stage, your ads may get a lot of clicks but few conversions (low conversion rate). A low conversion rate indicates that your offer isn’t engaging enough to convince the prospect to take action. Changing your landing page and revamping your offer can help.

You can also use A/B testing to test different landing pages, ad copies, keywords, audiences, etc., to find the best-performing options.

In the BOFU stage, you may have a high conversion rate but low RoAS. This means your ads are getting conversions, but the revenue generated is low. You can resolve this issue by reducing your customer acquisition costs.

4. Developing a Robust Lead Nurturing System and Sales Funnel

Gone are the days when siloed marketing was effective. Even though paid advertising is the most useful marketing strategy for D2C brands, you must complement it with other marketing and customer experience strategies.

For instance, you can support your paid ads by leveraging organic SEO. Ecommerce SEO has many benefits. It helps you rank higher on search engine results, drive brand awareness, expand remarketing audiences, and generate leads to fill your marketing funnel. Moreover, a solid SEO strategy can help you reduce your paid advertising costs.

The next step is to boost the user experience at each touchpoint. D2C brands generally use various touchpoints to acquire customers. Some examples include paid ads, organic SEO, social media, and email. It’s essential to identify all these touchpoints and ensure a seamless onboarding process on all of them.

Finally, invest in post-purchase engagement to elevate customers to the stage and loyalty and advocacy and increase their lifetime value (LTV). Asking for feedback, requesting referrals, and implementing cross-sell/upsell strategies are useful ways to engage your customers after a purchase.

Conclusion

The rise of D2C brands has been one of the major trends in the Ecommerce space in the last couple of years. Many customers prefer buying from D2C brands to enjoy authenticity, low prices, and convenience.

If you are a D2C brand, you can leverage paid advertising to increase brand awareness, engage potential customers across awareness stages, and drive customer acquisition.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author:

Akshay is a digital marketer and a startup enthusiast exploring the myriad avenues of everything marketing. At Beaconstac, he enables companies to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds through the use of custom QR codes.

How to Use First-Party Data for PPC Campaigns

Data is increasingly becoming an asset to companies. It provides insights that would otherwise be impossible to access, and this is essential to marketers and PPC campaigns.

We take a look at it - specifically, at first-party data - below.

What Is First-Party Data?

First-party data is any form of data a company gathers from its audience. This could mean customers or even just website visitors.

First-party data isn’t only harvested from a company’s website. It can be sourced from mobile applications, email and SMS marketing, Google Analytics, phone calls, and more.

Marketers and PPC experts can use this data to inform their campaigns and ensure they’re appropriate for their audience.

How Does First-Party Data Differ from Second and Third-Party?

The type of data you use - whether first-party, second, or third - is ultimately a trade-off. You must compromise on something, and this is usually either the quality of the data or its reach.

Third party data

Second-party data is gathered by another company in a related industry about its customers. This means it’s less specific to you but still helpful. Third-party data, on the other hand, is collated from many sources - it spreads its net wide but isn’t necessarily as focused. It’s often collected through tools like cookies.

Data of any kind is essential for marketing. It enables you to see how successful a campaign is and how customers behave, allowing you to alter and improve your efforts. In March, however, it was confirmed that Google was removing support for third-party cookies, effectively putting an end to third-party data.

This means it’s more important than ever to know how to use customer-provided data rather than relying on the trends previously found in third-party data.

First-party data is frequently considered to be the best data due to its quality and specificity. 92 percent of leading marketers believe it’s critical to growth. As logically follows, there are several benefits to utilizing this kind of data for PPC campaigns.

The Benefits of Using First-Party Data

Supercharged Campaign Relevance, Reach, and Performance

While the initial reach of the data gathered is reduced compared to other data sources, its specificity enables you to accurately tailor campaigns. You can ensure they’re relevant to your audience, perform well, and ultimately increase your customer base.

Access to Better Data

As already identified, first-party is often considered the best source of data. That’s because:

We won’t deny there are benefits to other types of data, but when it comes to PPC in particular, specificity is essential to success and extracting maximum value from your ad spend.

Maximum Opportunity for Personalization

With such nuanced and detailed data, you can also begin to really personalize your marketing efforts. This is incredibly important, as 91 percent of customers want the content to be personalized and aimed directly at them, even though the majority of marketers do not provide this.

The Challenges of First-Party Data

As with anything in life, it’s rarely simple. While first-party data is undeniably useful, it can still bring challenges. We address some of these below.

Building a First-Party Data Strategy

One of the complications with first-party data comes from combining large amounts of information from different sources - data that can often be siloed and difficult to integrate. As a result, you need to strategize.

This involves taking into consideration the source of your data. Think about the data you want to harvest – what information do you wish to gain from this to put it into action and make it useful?

When considering PPC, this might be understanding why clicks aren’t leading to conversions. Also, how are you going to map this data strategy throughout the customer journey?

By considering these issues when building your strategy, you can ensure your first-party data is working for you rather than simply causing a heavier workload.

Competitive Analysis and Decision-Making Needs to Be Real-Time

It’s undeniable that we live in a fast-paced world. This applies to business insights as well. Customer data can change incredibly quickly. By using tools like Google Analytics you can see your data in real-time and make changes accordingly.

For example, changing the copy on a PPC ad that’s not delivering as successfully as expected.

Maintaining Data Privacy

Maintaining data privacy is extremely important in this day and age. There are regulations in place to help – for example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – which function to keep those harvesting and using data accountable and protect customers from bad actors.

Learn the policies in place for your location and put them into practice. For example, GDPR requires you to gain consent before collecting third-party cookies. Use a pop-up when new people visit your site so they can decide how they want their data to be used before continuing.

First-Party Data Tactics for Your PPC Campaign

Onto the good stuff! Now you understand the role of first-party data, its pros, and its cons, you need to start making use of certain actionable strategies that allow you to leverage first-party data as part of your PPC efforts.

We’ve covered a few of these below.

Integrate Data into Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an extremely helpful tool when it comes to first-party data and making PPC decisions. Important data points include lead scoring, lead-to-sale conversion rates, and the total sale value of generated leads. By accessing this data in real-time, you can make fast-paced decisions and changes to your PPC adverts.

Control Budget Efficiency

With PPC strategies, you want to ensure your money is being used wisely. You can create an optimized remarketing list for search ads (RLSA) based on your first-party data, which targets leads who have a high likelihood of converting.

Simply put, it would be a waste of time to show PPC ads to people who wouldn’t be interested in your products or service. These lists can find potential leads and ensure the ad is going to the person it was intended for — your future customer.

Achieve Higher Target and Bidding Accuracy

First-party data can provide information for employing more accurate bidding techniques. While this can be done manually, it might be worth utilizing Smart Bidding strategies. This is the process of automating your bids with Google Ads to maximize a specific conversion goal.

First-party data comes into this by providing post-campaign, pre-Smart Bidding strategy analysis. Though you may feel apprehensive handing over control to an automated process, knowledge is power. This data will provide in-depth insight to inform and improve your strategy.

Turn Out Better, Expanded Audience Targeting

As we know, first-party data can provide crucial information on customer trends, behavior, and engagement. Through this, you can better understand your customer base and begin to expand and reach out to potential new leads.

You can use features such as Google’s Similar Audiences to generate new lists based on those you’ve already created.

This data enables you to target customers regardless of what part of the funnel they’re in. Once you understand the people you’re trying to interact with, it’s easier to find ways to appeal to them.

Boost Smart Bidding with Offline Conversion Data

As previously mentioned, not all data comes from your website. For example, data gathered via SMS or phone call isn’t tracked or gathered by Google. From experience, we know phone calls, in particular, can lead to high-value sales, but this data isn’t always captured.

Offline data might include information such as lead quality, sales generated via phone calls, and the value of sales earned. You can use call tracking tools to prevent missing this crucial data and optimize your Smart Bidding by working from the full picture.

Maximize Campaign Personalization

First-party data enables businesses to tailor their campaigns to their customers. The detailed insights into who your customer base is – demographically and behaviorally speaking – mean you can personalize your campaign in a way that speaks to your audience.

For example, if you’re a software as a service (SaaS) company, there will likely be certain links between the people using your software. Your software helps them to reach a common goal, and this can be used to tailor your campaign. Use this information alongside SEO for SaaS to create a fully developed and functional marketing strategy.

Easier Feed Management

Feeds enable campaign services, such as Google Smart Shopping, to run efficiently. Through first-party data, you can easily see which keywords are most impactful and learn other important pieces of information that enable you to manually optimize your product feed.

In today’s market, personalization is key to making sure your company stands out and stays ahead of the competition.

First-Party Data and PPC Efforts Can (and Should) Go Hand-in-Hand

It’s undeniable that PPC campaigns and first-party data should work together. As third-party data moves out of the picture, you must learn how to rely on your own data instead.

If you were to solely turn to second-party data, you would run the risk of gathering less relevant information. The more insights you have into your customer base (and the more specific these are), the better your PPC ads will be.

Use first-party data to your advantage today!

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author_
Nick Brown is the founder & CEO of accelerate, a SaaS marketing agency that exclusively partners with enterprise tech companies to scale their SEO and content marketing. Nick has launched several successful online businesses, written and published a book, and grown accelerate from a UK-based agency that now operates across the US, APAC, and EMEA. He has written for sites like BigCommerce and SmallBizDaily.

How Lead Tracking Can Improve Google Ads ROI

Anybody can track conversions. Smart marketers track leads. Why is this lead identification information important?

It’s not enough to know that someone called your business. You need to know more such as:

A conversion is not necessarily a lead, which is why it’s a bad idea to base your marketing decisions on conversions alone. In this article, we’ll explain how leads are different from conversions.

We’ll also go into detail regarding how Google Ads tracks conversions. As you’ll see, there are some limitations to the amount of information that Google Ads can track.

Next, we’ll describe how you can track individual leads instead of simply tracking conversions. We’ll also reveal how this enhanced data can be used with a tool like Optmyzr to improve your entire Google Ads strategy.

The Limitations of Google Ads Conversion Tracking

Google Ads is a powerful tool that does have some limitations. Issues arise when you try to track individual leads and measure lead quality.

Conversions vs. Leads

Conversion numbers tell you how many people took an action; lead data tells you who took action and whether they’re a sales-ready lead.

When tracking forms, chats, and calls, individual lead data tells you more than raw conversion numbers do. Google Ads can track these conversion actions, but it only shows total conversion numbers.

You’ll see the total number of leads from each conversion action, but not the identifying information for individual leads.

Google Ads has a phone call conversion tracking system that can track calls from call extensions on ads. It can also track calls from ads that have a location extension with a call option.

Unfortunately for marketers, Google’s built-in call tracking tool is not as effective as the third-party call tracking tools on the market.

Google’s call tracking feature tells you call conversions are coming in from ads, but you won’t know anything about the lead except that they saw your ad and called your business. You won’t know if they’re quotable leads.

Identifying quotable leads

Every business identifies quotable leads differently. Some simply look at the lead’s budget. Others look at their geographic location. Still, others look at the product fit.

All this information can usually be found in call transcripts, but Google does not provide these.

Screening non-qualified leads in Google Ads

Google Ads does have one way to screen non-qualified leads; by only passing along conversions if the call lasted over a minute.

The problem is that many calls can last 60-seconds and still not result in a qualified lead:

These are all non-qualified leads, and passing them along to Google Ads as conversions can skew your marketing reports. You may end up thinking an ad is working when it’s not. The longer you think that, the more marketing dollars you waste.

Google Ads can also track forms and chats, but the same limitations apply. Your Google Ads reports will only show the total number of conversions from each ad, separated by conversion type. You will not be able to see call transcripts, chat transcripts, or lead contact information.

This is where all the important lead information is contained; the data that tells you whether or not the lead is worth your time.

Running a Google Ads campaign costs money. In return, you want leads that drive revenue. Conversions alone are not necessarily worth any revenue, but quotable leads are.

Let’s find out how to make sure we’re getting quotable leads in return for ad spend.

How to track individual lead data with Google Ads

Lead tracking software fills in the gaps in your Google Ads data. Software like WhatConverts can integrate with Google Ads so you can see individual lead data, mark leads as quotable, then pass them to Google Ads as rock-solid conversions. Passing only quotable leads into Google Ads will improve your entire PPC strategy.

What about when it comes time to optimize your Google Ads? Optimization means identifying the ads that work, then shifting marketing spend towards effective ads and away from ineffective ads.

You won’t know what ads work if you’re only tracking conversions. If you can identify the ads that actually drive quotable leads, however, you can optimize accurately.

How to send quotable leads to Google Ads

A lead tracking system like WhatConverts allows you to easily mark leads as quotable or not quotable. For phone call leads, you can simply press “1” after the call if the lead is qualified or “2” if they aren’t. You can also assign sales value for phone call leads during this step.

For all leads, you can mark leads as quotable with one click of a button in your leads dashboard or in the email notification for the lead. Once you’re marking leads as qualified, it can greatly improve your marketing reporting. Here’s an example of how qualified lead reporting reveals more about how many leads come from individual keywords.

You can use WhatConverts to only pass conversions to Google Ads if they meet certain parameters such as, “only pass along the conversion if the lead is marked as qualified" (quotable). You can also choose to only pass along conversions if the lead is assigned a sales value in WhatConverts or your CRM.

Use Optmyzr and Lead Tracking Software to optimize Google Ads

Running a successful Google Ads campaign involves measuring a lot of variables. You don’t just want to know that your Google Ads drive quotable leads; you want to know which ad groups, ads, keywords, and landing pages drive quotable leads.

Once you have this information, you can optimize ads with a tool like Optmyzr. The more information you feed into the optimization system, the easier it is for Optmyzr to make useful suggestions about how to optimize ads.

If you pass every conversion to Google Ads without marking them as quotable, Optmyzr will make suggestions based on the conversion data alone. That means you could end up shifting marketing spend towards keywords and campaigns that drive solicitations or support calls from existing customers.

Taking the extra step to pass only quotable leads to Google Ads gives Optmyzr better data. Optmyzr can make suggestions to shift marketing spend towards keywords and campaigns that drive quotable leads and revenue.

This is a better way to increase return-on-investment for Google Ads. Since Optmyzr makes suggestions based on your Google Ads data, it’s important to make sure that Google Ads data is accurate and actionable.

Lead Tracking Tools work with Optmyzr to Improve PPC Performance

The more you optimize Google Ads based on sales-ready leads, the easier it is to identify the ads that drive the most revenue. When it comes time to show reports detailing how your Google Ads performed, you want to be able to prove that the business is getting a return on investment.

The best way to do that is by showing which ads delivered quotable leads. Using lead tracking tools with Optmyzr makes this possible, and easy.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author

Mac Mischke is the Content Marketing Manager at WhatConverts, a call tracking software company for marketing agencies.

8 Engagement Trigger Ideas to Use In Your Retargeting Campaigns

How do you make sure your site visitors will return to make a purchase after they bounce? How do you accompany your prospects in every stage of the buyer’s journey? How do you increase customer retention?

Retargeting is the answer.

Retargeting has proven to boost conversions of paid campaigns significantly. Kimberly-Clark reports their conversion rates to reach 50-60% when they rely on retargeting.

Displaying paid campaigns with relevant content to people who have previously shown interest in your company might become the final step your potential customers need to make the purchase decision.

Below, you’ll find 8 engagement trigger ideas that will help you make the most out of every interaction of your prospects and customers with your brand online.

1. Search history triggers

One of the first things that comes to our minds when we think of retargeting is targeting users based on their search queries.

Search retargeting is indeed the most popular and very effective way to reach the most relevant audiences.

Note: Whatever trigger idea you choose, you should carefully align actions that trigger your campaigns to the respective stage of the buyer’s journey the action is associated with. Wait… what?

In simple terms, if your campaign fires after a user has searched for the ‘how to automate my marketing campaigns’ query, it’s a good idea to target a person with awareness-stage content that educates rather than sells.

On the other hand, if you target competitors’ keywords, it means that your audience is already familiar with the problem and the available solutions to it. Consideration-stage content, like product comparisons and whitepapers, will work the best for this campaign.

When setting up a search retargeting campaign, you should always take search intent into account.

Search intent defines the purpose of a user’s search. Every query entered into the search box carries one of the following types of search intent:

Informational intent

Queries with informational intent usually include the keywords like ‘how-to,’ ‘guide,’ ‘definition,’ ‘what is,’ and other phrases used to research the specific subject.

In this stage, a user isn’t ready to buy your product yet. However, it doesn’t mean you should target them with paid campaigns. To drive these people to a purchase decision, you should be able to support them in the early stages of their buyer’s journey. Retarget people that only start to explore the topic with top-funnel content, such as step-by-step guides, explanatory videos, etc.

Search phrases that include branded keywords, e.g., your competitor’s brand names, are indicators of navigational intent.

When retargeting this type of audience, use content where your competitor’s products are reviewed and compared to yours.

Transactional intent

Of course, most often, you’ll want to retarget users who’ve shown transactional intent. These people use phrases like ‘best,’ ‘top,’ ‘price,’ ‘buy,’ ‘cheap,’ and other modifiers. It’s best to put your product landing pages, customer stories, and promo codes in front of the audience at this stage.

2. On-site behavior triggers

The next popular retargeting technique is to reach audiences that have previously interacted with your website.

Instead of simply retargeting all website visitors with one campaign, it’s highly recommended that you segment your audiences by on-site behavior.

The most common triggers for behavioral retargeting are:

Pages a user visited.

If different sections on your website serve the interests of completely different audiences, it’s clear you don’t want to target these audiences with similar campaign content.

Time on site.

The longer a visitor stays on your site, the more relevant they find the information you provide. To avoid wasting your campaign budget on people who have accidentally come to your site, specify the amount of time a person should spend on the website before getting to your retargeting list.

The number of times a user visited your site in a given time period.

Targeting returning visitors enables you to reach higher conversion rates.

Which trigger should you choose for your campaigns? There’s no correct answer. To figure out the most effective approach, you need to A/B test every trigger you think will potentially work for you.

3. Email interaction triggers

Do you have a mailing list? Then you definitely need to retarget your contacts with paid campaigns.

People might leave their emails on your website for multiple reasons. This action is a strong indicator that whatever you offer is relevant to your audience.

It’s also a good idea to segment audiences and personalize your campaign content based on how your contacts interact with your emails. Here are the major actions you can use as triggers for your campaigns:

For better results, you can personalize campaign content based on the trigger of your choice.

Say, if a person has signed up for your email newsletter but has never opened your emails, you can try to remind them about your brand with educational content. If one opens your emails regularly and interacts with your content, don’t hesitate to promote transactional campaigns to them.

4. Paid campaign interaction triggers

This is our favorite type of retargeting campaign. With this approach, you can reach completely new audiences, drive them through the marketing funnel, and gently nudge them to make a purchase decision.

How does it work?

To collect audiences for a retargeting campaign, you launch a campaign targeting broad audiences and offering content on a narrow topic that allows you to filter out irrelevant clicks. Next, you install a pixel that gathers data on all the campaign clickers. These people will be your audience for the follow-up (retargeting) campaign.

This approach is widely used specifically in health and wellness marketing. By distributing top-funnel content, like free meal plans or workout videos, marketers attract the audience that is potentially interested in becoming paid customers and then retarget them with transactional ads.

5. Cart abandonment

This trigger is related to on-site retargeting, but it’s worth highlighting it as a separate point.

An average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.80%. So, you lose about 70% of sales to… distractions.

You can easily avoid it by following up with users who have reached the shopping cart but abandoned it with a retargeting campaign.

To incentivize people to buy from you, offer a discount or an exclusive gift in a retargeting campaign. Adding a sense of urgency is also an effective way to close more deals with ads.

6. Purchase history triggers

Running an eCommerce business? This strategy is a must for you.

When a person buys from you for the first time, you gain their trust.

If a product meets their expectations, you don’t need to provide long lists of benefits and competitive advantages you have to offer to convince them to purchase again. All you need to do is to show them more relevant products.

Therefore, retargeting customers after they have purchased from your brand is even more effective than trying to convert new audiences. Just make sure your offers are of interest to people you want to reach.

7. Retention triggers

While the previous trigger idea makes sense for eCommerce marketers, this one will be useful for SaaS companies.

Retaining customers is easier and cheaper than pursuing new prospects.

To maintain relationships with your existing customers and encourage them to keep working with your brand, you can:

Tip: If you run Facebook ads, display a follow-up campaign in Messenger – this will help you to initiate a conversation with your customer and boost loyalty.

8. Upselling triggers

Do you offer freebies? Retarget free users when they take specific actions in your tool.

HubSpot runs email campaigns triggered when free users try to interact with paid features. You can apply a similar approach to your email marketing or paid advertising campaigns.

Conclusion

Retargeting is a great way to boost conversions, provided you understand your buyer’s journey.

When selecting a trigger idea, make sure you align your campaign content with the audience’s awareness of the subject. With smart, personalized campaigns, you’ll be able to achieve your goals without too much effort.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author

Adelina is a Content Marketer at Joinative, a native advertising agency, and SaaS. She’s responsible for building marketing partnerships, establishing content collaborations, and developing actionable resources for advertisers.

What are Call Conversions in PPC Marketing?

In the modern and competitive world of business, not only does every tactic count but knowing the effectiveness of each tactic we employ is of the utmost importance. When we invest time and money into one particular marketing avenue, we want to be sure we’re getting a good ROI on those investments.

If you sell products online, you want to use different channels and platforms and to be able to track all relevant metrics. To do so, you first need to understand certain concepts and methods of tracking.

For example, what does inbound calls mean? These can come from a variety of sources and be a major source of sales and conversions. We also want to know how to optimize eCommerce conversion funnels to drive sales.

One popular form of marketing/advertising is PPC (pay per click) where a business pays the major search engines (or large websites) every time their ad is clicked. But when that ad is linked to a dedicated number, how do we go about tracking conversions that come via calls?

Tracking this metric is a crucial component of identifying how effective campaigns are. You want real insights into how PPC works for your company.

What Are PPC Calls?

When you’re mounting a PPC campaign, you might choose to dedicate a number, or numbers, to those ads. These numbers connect to your business line (or specific and relevant teams within your business) and can be either standard numbers or toll-free.

Depending on how many campaigns you’re running, a number may be assigned to each campaign, product, or landing page.

You can choose to insert these numbers on your website as a simple piece of script that changes the number usually seen by site visitors. These numbers can correlate to specific triggers you choose, such as the customer’s geographic location, the referral point that led to them calling you, or a specific PPC ad or keyword.

Ideally, you want FCR every time. And what is FCR? It’s your ability to resolve or convert a customer’s call the first time they contact you.

But how do you go about tracking these numbers and associated conversions? And does tracking them offer substantive benefits?

The Benefits of PPC Call Tracking

Optmyzr - benefits of PPC call tracking

Image Source

Despite the many channels available in the digital age, lots of customers still want to talk to a real person when making a purchase. This can be highly effective in achieving conversions as customers can ask questions in real-time and make an informed decision there and then.

The data you get from PPC call tracking offers a range of insights:

Optmyzr - PPC call tracking Google Ads

Image Source

While many businesses’ first choice for call tracking is Google Ads, it’s not ideal and can be difficult to install. However, it can be of great value when set up properly or used with a third-party software solution to get the best from your data.

To begin, you should:

  1. Set up conversion tracking; you do this in the conversions section of your Google Ads toolbox.
  2. Create a new tracking script based on calls.
  3. This is where Google Ads tracking gets tricky. You are offered three options but can only choose one, though the reality is you’ll likely want to pick all of them.
  4. To bypass this issue, create a conversion script for each of the three options.
  5. Choose ‘yes’ for the ‘include in conversions’ option.
  6. Set a bottom end for call length to be identified as conversions.

With point 6, we come to where the issue lies with only using Google Ads tracking to define metrics. For example, say you choose ‘five minutes’ as your low end for call length. While five minutes may be the average time in which your agents manage a conversion, a call of that length doesn’t mean you have converted a sale every time.

So, while Google Ads tracking may give you some idea of how your ads are performing, it doesn’t give you an accurate idea of how many calls were actual conversions. It could show you you had 100 calls in a certain period, but you don’t know from the data how many were conversions. To get a more accurate idea, you need to bring in some third-party software,

Third-Party Software

We already utilize the best marketing automation tools to boost conversion rates. Thinking about tools is no different when it comes to PPC. Just as you want the best network security companies protecting your data, so you want to choose the best third-party software for tracking PPC metrics.

If you’re going to rely on calls via PPC as a major source of sales conversions, you need more accurate data on how they are performing, and to do that, you need to utilize third-party software. Every business knows good data helps inform decisions when it comes to new campaigns, so you need a more in-depth idea of what’s going on.

If you want more accurate data, you will need third-party call tracking tools to provide more detailed overviews of your calls and conversions. The sort of features you may want to look for include:

Having a great PPC tool can help you improve your account performance. Knowing exactly what you require from it is the first step to choosing the correct tool.

Tips on How to Use PPC Tracking Properly

Optmyzr - tips on how to use PPC tracking properly

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Not all calls or customers are equal. And if you do think of them as being so, you will never get a true view of the effectiveness of the various ads and campaigns you have employed. Consider some of the statistics below:

So it is very much worth your while to think carefully about how you will track calls and what data you want to look at. Here are a few tips to help you.

  1. Make A/B (split) testing a regular exercise so you can see what combinations (ads, landing pages, keywords, etc.) work best together and improve lead quality.
  2. Local focus. Where possible, tie local numbers to a customer’s location. If they perceive you as being ‘more local’ than other businesses, you have a better chance of conversions.
  3. Separation. If you have multiple ads or campaigns running simultaneously, there is little point in having them all routed to the same number as it will muddle your data. Create dedicated numbers or extensions for each separate campaign.
  4. Good routing. If you handle a large number of calls, ensure those calls go to the staff best equipped to deal with them. Different teams may have different product-specific knowledge so use the strengths and knowledge your teams already possess.

The Takeaway

Calls remain an integral part of how we do business, and while most calls will be initiated by the customer, we should also consider what is an outbound call within our current model. While the customer may call you first, it may be you need to call them back or contact them later with more information.

There are many different ways to increase conversion rates, such as using interactive content to boost leads and conversions. With the likelihood that you offer an omnichannel experience, you need to segment every area to see what works best for you. By tracking your PPC call conversions, you can ensure you are focusing on the most important factors.

This is a guest post. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the author

Elea is the SEO Content Optimization manager for RingCentral, a call center solution company the leader in global enterprise communication. She has more than a decade’s worth of experience in on-page optimization, editorial production, and digital publishing. She spends her free time learning new things.

6 Mistakes in Call Tracking That Are Harming Your PPC Campaigns

Call tracking is a form of conversion tracking that allows you to determine how many phone calls you’re receiving due to your pay-per-click advertising.

Let’s say you’re running an ad that offers free project management tools as a lead magnet. Your landing page is designed to capture leads. However, not everyone who lands on this page will fill out your contact form. Many of them will call you instead. If you’re not tracking your calls, you won’t be aware of how these calls are being prompted.

For example, if you generate 2000 leads a month and about 40% are calls, you are essentially working blind with a large proportion of your PPC budget. You’re entirely ignorant of the source of 800 potential customers. With call tracking, you can optimize your marketing to drive more calls and more success.

There are two types of calls you can track. The first type is those received directly from your ads. This is when people search on a smartphone and directly press the phone call button next to your advert. You will be charged for each call you receive in the same way that regular PPC ads charge you for every click.

The other type is phone calls prompted by your website. You receive these types of calls when someone clicks on your ad, lands on your website, sees your phone number, and manually dials it into their phone. This type of call is inherently more difficult to track because the conversion is not registered in your PPC campaign analytics.

When executed successfully, call tracking can help you to refine and improve your marketing campaigns. However, you need to be aware of the pitfalls. Here are 6 common mistakes that will harm your PPC campaign.

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1. Not using Dynamic Call Tracking.

So you’ve set up your pay-per-click ads on multiple platforms. You’ve got big shiny calls to action which encourage the viewer to give you a call. But when the calls come flooding in, you don’t know by which advert or platform each call has been triggered.

This is where Dynamic Call Tracking comes into play. It allows you to track what was previously untrackable. Dynamic Call Tracking enables you to track or change your phone number’s last three or four digits based on the site visitor’s source. Just as you use SKUs to track your inventory’s movement, you can use Dynamic Call Tracking to track your inbound leads’ movement.

You can set this up just for Google Ads traffic, Facebook traffic, or for all sources of traffic if you find this helpful. The last three or four digits of your phone number change to allow the Dynamic Call Tracking provider to identify that a tracking number has been called. This allows the conversion to be logged.

Most importantly, in the case of Google Ads, especially, is the ability to find out the exact keyword that prompted the phone call.

Image Source: Wordstream

2. Not having an omnichannel approach.

Most businesses make the mistake of not following up on calls adequately with an omnichannel approach. Just because an interaction starts as a phone call doesn’t mean that communication should be limited to this form of communication. You should implement an omnichannel sales process, which only begins with the calls you receive.

This means that your inbound call agent doesn’t just handle calls; they act as a complete virtual customer assistant. They should make sure that all your calls are logged into a CRM tool. These calls should then be followed up with the same attention you would dedicate to any other type of customer.

If you’re collecting an email address on a call with a user, you should send an automated follow-up email to wrap up the call with an actionable message inside. Not only does this keep the customer engaged, but you can start to track the open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates of these emails per phone number.

By doing this, you’ll see critical leading indicators of call quality beyond what call times alone can show you. Additionally, you’ll get quicker feedback than if you just wait for sales reports to come back.

3. Not scoring leads.

The concept of lead scoring, or call scoring, relates to the performance of different call sources. How meaningful or actionable are they? Every online advertiser knows that not all clicks are created equal. Many factors affect the value of a click, such as the keyword searched within the ad copy and the site the ad was running on.

Call scoring extends this concept. Be mindful of specific metrics that will help you to understand the actual value of a call better. A sophisticated marketer would never put a flat price on the value of a click to their website without evaluating what happened after a visitor’s arrival. Similarly, you should never assess a call campaign’s success by considering how many calls you received alone.

The easiest thing to look at beyond raw call count is call duration. It’s not a perfect metric, but it can paint you a much more informative picture than your raw call count.

For instance, you may find that calls that last under two minutes are unlikely to be of any value to your business. There is no meaningful customer engagement. Rather than counting the number of total calls you receive, you would be better off counting the number of phone calls that last more than two minutes.

Even more crucially, take a look at the ratio of long to short calls. Not only will the short calls be likely to have little or no value, but a noticeably higher ratio of short calls from a particular source often indicates below-average quality on longer calls from the same source.

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4. Not calculating the expected revenue per call.

While looking at call time is a step in the right direction, it’s certainly not all you should rely on. If you’re not able to discover the results of calls yourself, make sure you set up feedback loops to integrate the true sale or revenue numbers.

You should be retrieving the actual revenue number for each of your inbound call tracking numbers. Divide this by the number of total calls to calculate the average expected revenue per call. Make sure this is factored into the revenue calculations for the pages on which these calls are generated. Ensure it’s also incorporated into the ROI metric for the media spend that it took to attract the user.

Another vital element to increase the expected revenue per call is to prioritize the distribution of your calls. This allows you to make sure that your top-performing phone agents are fielding your highest value calls instead of your agents in training. It’s effective business management to optimize your call distribution in this way, as it can significantly impact your calls’ overall value.

5. Not optimizing keywords.

Another common error is not optimizing keywords based on the data received from tracking your calls. This is a vital part of marketing for small business.

Let’s say you have 100 keywords in your Google Ads account. You see that 20 of those keywords have a reasonable cost per lead and cost per sale based on onsite conversions. But it’s the other 80 keywords in the account that cause an issue. How do you know which ones to turn up, which ones to turn down, or which ones to turn off altogether?

Some of these keywords may be costing you money without any return whatsoever. To maximize the value of your PPC budget, you need to optimize your keywords.

To this end, knowing the value of every keyword in your Google Ads or Facebook account is so important. You can obtain more customers by allocating more spend towards the keywords or ads that are proven converters. Of course, you should also move your spend away from weak areas. You must cut wastage to get a better PPC ad performance from the same spend.

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6. Not recording calls.

The final mistake people make when call-tracking is not recording calls. Many people don’t record calls because they use a software solution like Twist, which has limited file storage. Many other people just don’t understand its benefits.

When you record your calls, you can access and re-listen to them at any given time. Recorded calls are a bank of information that you can use to make adjustments to your PPC campaign.

Listening to calls allows you to evaluate the types of leads you are garnering from a particular source. How strongly does this audience and its problems overlap with those of your target audience? Is the source a location worthy of your PPC budget spend?

Recording calls allows you to monitor and assess the work of your call center. It will enable you to complete a call center quality assurance evaluation sheet and determine whether your staff are doing their best job to help prospective clients get the answers they need. Are employees using the tools you’ve given them? Are they using excellent sales skills to resolve customer queries? Listening to the recorded calls makes it much easier to determine whether inbound leads are being dealt with professionally.

This is a guest post. The content here is for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not represent that of Optmyzr.

About the Author

Victorio Duran III is the Associate SEO Director at RingCentral, a global leader in cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions. He has over 13 years of extensive involvement on web and digital operations with diverse experience as web engineer, product manager, and digital marketing strategist.

Jan 2021 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo: New in Google, Microsoft & Facebook

January 2021 is the kickstart for a new year of rising opportunity, in the hopes that we can build on our foundations and push for success. Those foundations supported by platform improvements to aid us towards our targets and help maintain balance when faced with unsettling uncertainty, such as the introduction of iOS 14.

1. Google Ads

1.1 – Data Exclusion

Periods For Smart Bidding

There have been times when a business has to work around troubles with stocking, warehouse capacity, and even periods of server outage, which can skew data consistency. When it comes to something as data-dependent as smart bidding, this can cause a real issue in assuming false assumptions in demand. Fortunately, you can now exclude a range of time where your tracking may have been down, so that smart bidding doesn’t take into account that period of misleading data. Whilst it’s a shame this wasn’t available last year when we needed it most, at least we can be more prepared going forward.

1.2 – Target ROAS Now With Bid Limits

Recently, we have seen changes to our Target ROAS campaigns, allowing us to set minimum and maximum bid limits, which wasn’t previously available. It’s a very welcome addition; we’ve had our share of smart bidding anomalies with a CPC so high, you start questioning Google’s strategy. The support documents for tROAS campaigns have been updated to include this new feature.

1.3 – Similar Audiences Come With A Size

Whilst opinions may vary for ‘similar to’ audiences, it’s still another tool in our belt for account optimization. You can now view an estimated audience size for these similar audiences, giving you a bit more transparency as you expand your targeting. There are limitations, however, with the estimates only appearing for Search audiences of more than 20,000 and Youtube audiences of more than 5,000.

2. Microsoft Advertising

2.1 – In-market Audiences Now In Beta For The EU Market

In their key product updates blog for January, Microsoft announced that In-market audiences will are available in beta for EU advertisers, with the exception of Belgium. What’s better is that you can import all your In-market audiences from Google with ease as they have updated the import process to accommodate these new changes. More audience options are always a good thing; more data leads to increased optimization.

In addition to the above, Microsoft have expanded the beta for Customer Match audiences to non- UK/EU/China advertisers and said they’re working on a Target Impression Share bid strategy to be released later down the line.

3. Facebook & Instagram

3.1 – Facebook Attribution Window Changes

In October we spoke about the changes to Facebook’s attribution window and how it’ll affect accounts and reporting. This was something that was due to take effect but it seems that for a lot of accounts it was delayed. Only recently have we seen notifications pop up confirming that these attribution changes have taken place. Below is a slightly amended version of what we wrote.

Due to changes in digital privacy, Facebook will be removing the 28-day attribution window option and will instead offer a 7-day window, which they claim is a more sustainable measurement strategy. We can’t stress just how necessary data is for advertising so it’s disheartening news to hear. Any historical account data before these changes will remain. During this transition, you may find your reports showing a downturn in performance, although it’s important to note that this may likely be down to how results are measured.

3.2 – iOS 14

iOS 14 has shaken up Facebook, causing a lot of advertisers to panic. However, it’s not all doom and gloom as according to a leading expert, certain conversions will still be recognized, even if an Apple user decides to opt-out of tracking. You’ll still lose out on a lot of other useful data that will be important to optimizing accounts but Facebook will still at least be able to track purchase or lead conversion events.

January Resolutions

Smart bidding and audiences have been the main focus for Google & Microsoft this past month, with new bid limits and data exclusion periods to help compensate for poor results and more audience tools to expand our targeting. Meanwhile, Facebook appears to have timed their attribution window changes in line with iOS 14 permission updates, potentially as a way to mitigate the length of data inconsistency.

Dec 2020 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo

To finalize this ambivalent year, the latest updates round off what the platforms have been building on for these last few months. Machine learning has pushed accounts forward, market demand has been record breaking and audience engagement is now more important than ever. Our strategy is governed by the resources available and all eyes are transfixed on what the next year has to bring.

1. Google Ads

Explanations Expand To Target CPA

Explanations is a new feature to Google Ads, previously in beta, that gives you additional insights regarding your campaigns and performance factors, such as bid adjustments affecting devices. We’ve seen these appear more and more in our tROAS campaigns to great benefit and now the feature will start showing for tCPA campaigns. This additional information is invaluable when strategizing forward, especially around the holiday season where budgets tend to shift.

Google Ads Editor v1.5

Google Ads Editor is a favorite of ours given how much you can do on the platform compared to the sluggish Google Ads web app interface. New updates provide new opportunities and with the recent v1.5 release we have access to more recommendations, ad strength for RSAs, and image extensions. Whilst the application is still lacking important insights such as Explanations above, the ability to filter for new metrics and make changes efficiently is always a big bonus.

2. Microsoft Advertising

Mixed Campaigns & Data Retention Changes

Microsoft added mixed campaigns to their platform, allowing you to combine both regular ad groups and dynamic ad groups into one sole campaign. This has a lot of potential, especially taking into account smart bidding and campaign goals, which both ad group types will be able to contribute toward. Whether you choose to combine your ad groups or keep them separate as not to skew metrics is entirely your call but for accounts with a smaller budget, this could be huge.

In the same update, Microsoft also announced increases to their data retention window for Universal Event Tracking with data being able to be retained for 390 days, compared to 180 days which it was previously. You will need to update the membership duration of your remarketing lists in order to take advantage of this increase.

3. Facebook & Instagram

Preparing For iOS 14

With the release of Apple’s iOS 14 update, they announced their AppTrackingTransparency framework in the fight for data privacy, which required apps to show the user how their tracking information is being used, specifically if that information is being sent elsewhere, which they can deny. It came as a tough blow to advertising platforms with Facebook including these prompts from January 2021. To combat this, they have provided an update on how they are adapting to this framework, alongside a range of advice on how to prepare your accounts.

Shopping Now On Whatsapp

With many businesses utilizing Whatsapp for their customers, Facebook are continuously releasing new features to cater for more efficient engagement. The latest update makes it easier to shop with ‘Carts’. Through Carts, you can browse the items you’re looking for and add products to your basket, ready to be sent back to the retailer. Given that Whatsapp is one of the most used and loved social media platforms in the world, this is incredibly powerful, it’s just a shame it didn’t come sooner.

A Quiet December

It’s been a quiet December for updates given how much the platforms have worked to accommodate the demand that 2020 brought. Still, there is continued focus to provide more tools for advertisers, with Google expanding their insights for tCPA campaigns, Microsoft increasing their data retention windows, and Facebook giving Whatsapp a shopping facelift.

This year has been a tough one for advertisers and has yet brought many opportunities with businesses adapting to online sales. Throughout this year we’ve seen many smart bidding success stories, free product listings available for retailers and more insights than we know what to do with. We hope you have enjoyed this year’s tech updates and wish you the best as we go into the near year.

Nov 2020 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo: New in Google, Microsoft & Facebook

As we close towards the end of this rather unusual year, changes are being made to prepare for 2021 in what could be an even bigger opportunity for e-commerce. We’ve seen many businesses adapting their main source of income to online platforms and consumers changing their spending habits in tandem. The market is full of amazing potential, these new features help us capitalize on that.

1. Google Ads

1.1 – Enhanced Tools For Campaign Creation

Expansion is something we all do within Google Ads and campaign creation is a big part of that. Whilst we all have checks to ensure that the right settings are there, it helps to have a system there to keep you informed of any tips or potential errors. That’s why Google have introduced new tools for creating campaigns, allowing you to do so in confidence.

1.2 – Auction Insights Now Available For Report Editor

The report editor is something many of us utilize as it’s a handy way of compiling metrics, segmenting by desired dimensions. You can now access auction insights to these reports, although the number of metrics you can attach to them is limited, similar to accessing auction insights data within Data Studio. Still, the additional layout options that report editor provides is a handy way of analyzing competition within the Google Ads platform.

1.3 – Simulated Insights For Smart Bidding

We’ve recently seen in some of our accounts a new feature for simulating budgets, Target CPA & Target ROAS changes. You can now see the effect changing these targets will have on your account for up to the next 90 days with some incredibly powerful forecasting that also, quite handily, caters for seasonality. We’re hoping this update gets rolled out across all accounts as it’s a great tool for future strategy.

On top of that, there are improvements to the platform, such as the ability to view recommendations within the bid strategy report, or view average target CPA/ROAS in the campaigns tab. Also, for search campaigns, you can hover over conversions to get an estimate of future conversions, after taking into account time lag. Little quality of life improvements like these are handy for efficiently navigating through the busy platform.

2. Microsoft Advertising

2.1 – Promotion Extensions For Microsoft Advertising

As Microsoft Ads continues to bring its platform up to date with the competition, the newest & more welcome addition is the ability to create promotion extensions to go alongside your ads. These extensions, much like Google’s, allow you to set defined promotions between a date range and even select the occasion. These are invaluable for seasonal periods such as Black Friday & Christmas, adding hugely beneficial information to your ads, increasing the likelihood of someone engaging.

2.2 – Recommendations, Keyword Planner & More

Continuing with their platform improvements, Microsoft announced a range of new features starting with updates to the Keyword Planner, giving more effective keyword suggestions and even allowing the opportunity to scrape URLs for more keyword opportunities. This has the core of dynamic search ads but built for a very proactive approach towards search campaigns. It will be interesting to see how these suggestions turn out.

What was a major update for Google Ads has now made its way to Microsoft, that being recommendations. Whether you have agreed or disagreed with some of the strategy tips recommendations have made in the past (more budget please), there’s always valuable information to give and insights to report on. Having the ability to access that in Microsoft Ads is a huge boost to the platform and one many advertisers will take advantage of.

3. Facebook & Instagram

3.1 – Branded Content For Instagram Reels

Recently, we talked about Instagram’s Reels, how they’re fighting Tiktok for competition, and the potential this format could have for advertisers. Well, it’s just got even better. You can use branded content tags to promote your business through Reels, with Live on the horizon. In a world where social media influencers are plenty, this brings about more options at your disposal.

In addition, there’s a more streamlined process for brands to incorporate their ads into creator content. No longer do you have to rely on an organic post, now using the new Creation Flow, advertisers can initialize the setup with the creator accepting the terms and posting to their feed. It’s a lovely bit of synergy that brings collaboration together in a much smoother fashion.

An Insightful November

The further we go down the path of smart bidding, the more insights we are rewarded with. This month Google & Microsoft have brought us more reporting options, proactive tools, and forecasting models to help strategize accounts towards a better future. Finally, we have Instagram providing tools to help advertisers and content creators work together for a seamless branding experience that benefits all parties.

For more information on Mabo and their paid advertising management services, please visit Mabo.co.uk.

Oct 2020 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo: New in Google Ads & Facebook

Artificial intelligence is bringing about a golden age of technological divination, opening up insights that predict futures and trends that shape the market. Advanced machine learning models change the way we work, always learning and adapting, providing us with an accurate array of digestible data. The latest features from this month include new tools to give advertisers the ability to tap into that unrelenting power.

1. Google Ads

1.1 – Google Insights Page & Performance Max Bidding

Google’s announced two additions to the Ads platform in their recent Advertising Week roundup. The Insights page, which initially will be available as a beta, will prove key trends and account information to help accounts push in those areas. It may show an interest in a certain product range, or forecast future growth opportunities which you will be able to optimize towards. It goes without saying just how incredibly useful this feature will be, allowing you to catch the latest trends in time and build your strategy around them.

Performance Max campaigns will serve as an addition to Search campaigns, helping find the signals that ultimately lead to a conversion. They will allow you to focus on several goals such as new customer acquisitions which will give the option to assign additional conversion value, calculated from the potential future revenue. However you intend to choose your goals and accompanying value, we’re receiving yet another tool to expand our already diverse toolkit.

1.2 – Data-Driven Attribution Changes

Attribution modeling has always been a hugely important part of accounts, and getting the right model can play a huge role in an account’s performance. The Data-Driven model is excellent as it’s unique to each account, using advanced learning to find the ads which had the highest impact for each conversion.

Fortunately, the data requirements for an account to be eligible for data-driven attribution have reduced to a minimum of 3,000 ad interactions and at least 300 conversions in the past 30 days; that’s down from 15,000 ad interactions and 600 conversion events in the past 30 days. Google have updated their support article with these changes.

In addition to this change, Youtube metrics have now been included in attribution reports so that you can see how much video metrics play a part in conversions, further expanding opportunities for advertisers. This is currently in beta so you’ll have to opt in to take advantage and to put the cherry on top, Google have mentioned that they’ve got plans to include Display ads in the upcoming months.

1.3 – Google Local Services Ads Now Available In Europe

Google introduced Google Local Services Ads a while ago, allowing users to find local businesses, book appointments & more. These ads initially came to US & Canadian audiences however they’ve recently expanded to include a host of European countries including the UK, France & Germany. With a focus on home service industries, such as plumbing or electricians, these unique ads are ideal for lead generation with the added ‘Google Guaranteed’ bonus.

1.4 – Google Analytics 4

The new update for Google Analytics utilizes the same machine learning, which has successfully powered the Ads platform, provides smarter data insights to push for success. Similar to the Insights page for Ads, these new insights can give access to current trends and user demand, alongside predictive metrics that can project the amount of revenue a group of customers can bring, producing new opportunities for custom audiences. It will also give deeper access to a customer’s journey, how they discovered your brand and how they engage with your content. It’s safe to say these new features, which require you need to create a new view to access, will be pivotal to anyone wanting to analyze their traffic.

2. Facebook & Instagram

2.1 – Facebook Attribution Window Changes

Due to changes in digital privacy, Facebook will be removing the 28-day attribution window option and will instead offer a 7-day window, which they claim is a more sustainable measurement strategy. We can’t stress just how necessary data is for advertising so it’s disheartening news to hear. These changes came into effect from the 12th of October; however, any historical account data will remain. During this transition, you may find your reports showing a downturn in performance, although it’s important to note that this may likely be down to how results are measured.

2.2 – Facebook’s New Language Model

The team behind Facebook’s incredible AI have announced significant changes to the way language is processed, moving forward to their multilingual machine translation model (MMT). Whereas before, the translation model used English as the connective language due to the extent of English data that’s available. The new model, named M2M-100, cuts out the English connection allowing for 2,200 language directions improving how the meaning of the original text is conveyed. This change brings for more accurate translations with a model that’s continually improving in a world that’s getting closer every day.

October’s Attribution To Success

This month’s changes seem to be heavily focused on attribution changes with Google now including Youtube into attribution reports and reducing the limitations for accounts to take on the data-driven model. To contrast that, Facebook have reduced their attribution window from 28 to 7 days but have at least updated their ad policies allowing for more lenient creatives. Finally, Google Analytics has seen a new update to bring in advanced machine learning features, a massive benefit to all platforms.

For more information on Mabo and their paid advertising management services, please visit Mabo.co.uk.

Sep 2020 Paid Advertising Roundup from Mabo: Google Limits Search Terms & More

As we come to the end of Q3, preparations are underway to take advantage of the seasonal peaks to maximize on this upcoming potential. The ability to access a monumental amount of data is our biggest ally in the battle for profitability. New updates can come as a rallying cry of innovation or a new hurdle to surpass; the way we react to these changes can be a defining attribute for any advertiser.

1. Google Ads

1.1 – Google reducing visibility for search terms

In a heavily disputed move, Google announced on the Ads platform that they will start hiding low-traffic search terms, only showing high-traffic results. To confirm, even if that term received a click, it might not show up.

Data is king in this industry, whatever the amount, so this move has received some rather negative feedback. According to Google, this is a move to support privacy and protect user data, which seems slightly hypocritical considering how many user signals are tracked and used for smart bidding.

1.2 – In-market audiences available for shopping campaigns

Google’s latest CSS newsletter has announced that in-market audiences have officially been launched for Shopping campaigns, a hugely welcome feature for many of us. With smart bidding taking away a lot of optimization opportunities, audiences are now more critical than ever given that you can still enhance your smart bidding through adjustments. Additional audiences bring more options for you to optimize your bidding, allowing you to utilize that data tweak your bidding on a more granular level.

1.3 – Create rules more efficiently in merchant center

Feed rules have become even easier to do in the Merchant Center. You can add multiple words and phrases within a single rule with new options giving access to ‘any of’ variants, such as ‘contains any of’. Gone are the days of arduously creating a rule for each query to action on; quality-of-life improvements like these are a real step forward for user efficiency.

2. Microsoft Ads

2.1 – Dynamic Remarketing & more

One of the best additions this month comes from Microsoft, giving us a huge boost just in time for the holiday season with some powerful audience features.

Dynamic Remarketing is now accessible for advertisers, allowing you to target your audience with the very products they’ve been viewing; a perfect fit for Black Friday, Christmas and more. Go one step further with LinkedIn Profile Targeting, giving you a unique approach to create custom audiences based on a user’s company, job function and industry.

Finally, in-market audiences are now available for both France and Germany.

3. The Digital Services Tax (gov.uk publication)

3.1 – Google parrying the new tax

Google’s answer to tackling the new DST fees is one that’s come with shock, with them imposing the tax onto the advertiser’s bill as a percentage of spend. Initially affecting the UK, Austria and Turkey, the fees will start as of November 1 with a straight 2% of a UK account’s monthly spend being added onto the bill, rising to 5% for Austria & Turkey accounts.

Although this fee impacts all businesses, it does seem exceptionally harsh to SMEs, having just dealt with the economic repercussions of lockdown.

3.2 – Amazon following suit

Amazon has followed the same approach as Google by forwarding the new tax onto its sellers, their justification being that they absorbed the DST whilst the legislation was in the process of being passed. The fees for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) will increase by 2% as of September 1 and 15, respectively.

3.3 – Facebook’s heroic response

Facebook has a history of sour representation given David Fincher’s powerful 2010 drama and congressional hearing that sprouted several unflattering memes. Yet in an inspiring move, they have announced their intention to absorb the new tax so that it’s not passed onto sellers.

We’re seeing a rare glimpse of ethical responsibility coming from Facebook in a bold act that will surely improve their image.

A controversial September

This September is one that advertisers may hope to forget. Despite Google bringing some practical updates, they’ve also included some revisions which are arguably more detrimental to the ads platform. Amazon continues to be frugal and Facebook is taking an unexpected moral high ground, though we’re yet to hear any official word from Microsoft.

Unlike the last two months showering us with utility updates, this month hasn’t been half as fruitful.

For more information on Mabo and their paid advertising management services, please visit Mabo.co.uk.

Omnisend’s 8 Best Practices for Shopify App Advertising in 2020

Among the main contributors to Shopify’s growth are the multitude of apps available on its platform. Indeed, some of the top Shopify apps make it easier to develop, grow, and maintain online businesses. But how do you use them to advertise your e-commerce store and grow your revenues in today’s business environment? Here are some of the best practices you should employ this year:

1. Prioritize personalization

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/omnisend

It’s critical for today’s consumer to feel a connection with the brands that they patronize. So, whenever you reach out to your customers, make sure that it’s with a highly relevant message.

There are apps that seamlessly plug into your Shopify store that give you incredible personalization options. Such software allow you to segment your subscriber base in great detail in order to reach out to them with highly converting messages. With the right tool, you’ll be able to target your customers not merely based on their profile data but also their specific activities or shopping behaviors.

2. Focus on customer retention

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/swell

Acquiring customers is much more expensive than retaining the ones you already have. Plus, it has a greater impact on your bottomline. In fact, even a 5% increase in your customer retention rate can boost your profits by up to 95%.

One of the best ways to cultivate customer loyalty is to maintain a compelling rewards program. By rewarding your customers for every interaction with your brand, you’ll easily boost repeat purchases and strengthen relationships with your customers. All it takes is finding the best Shopify app to integrate into your store.

3. Recover abandoned carts

Source: https://www.invespcro.com/blog/the-top-7-reasons-for-shopping-cart-abandonment-tips-for-avoiding-them/

About 7 out of 10 of shoppers on your store will fill up their carts without checking out. Often, that happens either because of unexpected shipping costs or they’re simply not yet ready to purchase. But no matter the reason, it pays to lure these shoppers back in.

Some Shopify apps allow you to build automation workflows that identify cart abandoners and re-engage them through personalized and targeted messages. This allows you to revive what would have already been lost sales. You can also recover abandoned carts by setting up exit-intent pop-ups as well as retargeting ads.

4. Engage in retargeting

Source: https://www.business2community.com/marketing/17-retargeting-ad-statistics-will-make-retarget-right-now-2-infographics-01464774

Retargeting can be useful not just for cart abandoners but also for window shoppers, which are common even in e-commerce. The good news is that there are digital tools that allow you several chances to convert online window shoppers into actual paying customers. This makes a significant impact on your revenues, as window shoppers are 70% more likely to convert with retargeting.

With Shopify apps, you can easily run retargeting campaigns on sites like Facebook, Google, and their properties (e.g. Instagram, Youtube, and Gmail). These allow you to integrate your shop data and manage your entire marketing strategy on a single platform and drive traffic to your Shopify store.

Source: https://sixads.net/blog/shopify-traffic-channels-generating-sales/

5. Optimize for mobile

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/shopney-mobile-app

Transactions on mobile devices are expected to make up at least 50% of all ecommerce sales. So, it’s essential that you have a platform that’s optimized for the mobile audience. That means making sure you have an incredibly responsive website. Or, if it makes sense for your business, you can build your own native app.

Mobile app builders on Shopify make creating your own native mobile app remarkably easy. These software don’t just make it easy to develop your brand’s ecommerce app but also provides everything you need to offer a good mobile customer experience. Typically, that includes features like simplified checkout process, in-app messaging, and rich push notifications. When you are planning to improve your ecommerce business, mobile should be on priority list.

6. Make the most of social proof

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/loox

User reviews are valued by 88% of shoppers just as much as personal recommendations. Given this, it pays to use the reviews you already have not only on your social media pages but also everywhere else you can manage. These are especially valuable on your product pages.

Shopfiy apps allow you to easily integrate social proof like user photos and product reviews onto your product pages. By using these apps, you make your web visitors more likely to complete a purchase.

7. Produce interactive content

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/pickzen

Interactive content like quizzes and questionnaires is one of the most effective lead magnets for retail websites. This advertising tactic has an average lead capture rate of 31.6%.

Apart from engaging quizzes, among the best ways to use this tool is to produce questionnaires that lead to highly relevant product recommendations. Shopify apps don’t just make it easier for you to create these interactive content but also capture data and gather insights from your users.

8. Host engaging contests

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/gleam

A chance at winning enticing prizes can be an excellent motivation for your customer to help you grow your audience and boost your brand’s popularity. If planned correctly, hosting contests can also be a cost-effective advertising tactic.

Today, there are Shopify apps that allow you to easily create online competitions or giveaways. These tools provide everything you need not just to develop and run your contests but also to pick winners, verify entries, and capture data.

Conclusion

Shopify has enabled hundreds of thousands of businesses to reach online audiences. Its success as an ecommerce platform is undoubtedly driven by its versatility. It is simple enough for novices to navigate but also dynamic enough for experienced digital retailers to get exactly what they need.

But to really make the most out of the platform, you should learn to identify the best Shopify apps to support your business. Take advantage of them to advertise your shop, grow your audience, and nurture your customers. Consequently, you’ll enjoy incredible revenue growth as well as a stellar brand reputation.