Black Friday is going to be here in a matter of days, and you just got the go-ahead to use some additional budget to build awareness with YouTube ads. The problem is you don’t have enough time to get new holiday creative in time. Not ideal, but it’s not the end of the world. If you’re stuck with limited creative or you have to use the same videos you ran last year, I’m going to show you a few ways you can squeeze a little bit more juice out the orange before you have to throw it out. Let’s hop in. Even if your creative is limited, test different targetsI’ve had plenty of e-commerce clients who have seasonal products. So one tactic I like trying is utilizing site search. If you have site search set up in your Google Analytics, you will be able to see the search queries users were typing when they were visiting your site. As a marketer, I like to go back and see what was popular during the holiday season the previous year. Like this example: We see flavors during last year’s holiday season that most likely are not made or not popular at other times of the year. And these season products were the most searched. If these are products this company plans on selling again this year, I will consider creating custom intent audiences based off of these site search queries to try and get in front of users who are looking for these products again in the new season. (Yes, I understand some of the site searches are very broad. So instead of just “peppermint,” I’ll try “peppermint coffee pod” instead). Remember, for YouTube, custom intent audiences are based upon broad-match related variants of actual search queries people have typed on Google.com. Since custom intent audiences haven’t yet been merged with custom affinity audiences like we were warned at the last Google Marketing Live, you can try and capitalize on higher keyword intent with your video campaigns one last time. One other solution is to create custom intent audiences using keywords of the top-selling products from the previous year (again, if they’re applicable for this year too). Head over to your conversions tab and review your e-commerce overview during your main holiday season. Take the product names (sorry had to blur mine out) and create audiences from these products as well as similar products users may want to buy during this time of year. Refresh your product selections for TrueView for ShoppingIt’s the holidays so of course, you want to promote your products. TrueView for Shopping campaigns are a great way for YouTube marketers to promote their products and potentially drive traffic to specific product pages. Last year I wrote an article on how to create evergreen TrueView for Shopping campaigns, and the theory definitely still applies to the holiday season. One of the options we have to select products for our TrueView for Shopping campaigns is custom labels from our Merchant Center feeds. Just like how we can review previous holiday season data to find new targeting options, we can use that data to update our labels for product selections. Whether you want to use your main feeds or a supplemental feed, keeping your custom labels updated for the holiday season can help you promote the right products at the right time. Even if you don’t have new video creative to use, at least the products that will appear alongside your TrueView in-stream ads will be different and relevant to your holiday goals. Test your call-to-action extensionsAt this time last year, we were still using call-to-action overlays on our TrueView in-stream ads to drive traffic to the site. Those days are gone, and now we have to use the call-to-action extensions. No matter what creative you have to use this year, keep testing out different call-to-action extensions to try and drive more traffic to your website. Your video creative could be the same but test different headlines and call-to-action messages for higher CTRs. Remember even if the viewer skips your ad and goes on to the video watch page they originally intended on visiting, your call-to-action extensions will still be visible on the page. Make your holiday messages, offers, sales, etc. appealing enough to gain more clicks from your YouTube videos even if your creative is the same. Final pointI will always recommend trying to get new creative that speaks as specifically as possible to your target audience, the products you are promoting and the deals you are offering during the holiday season. The more you cater your creative to match the feel of the season, the better chance you have of getting higher engagement rates in a competitive advertising season. But if you don’t new creative to use, try these tips I mentioned to maximize your performance with the limited creative you may have. The post Getting the most out of limited YouTube creative during the holiday season appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2KRKc0y
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If your operating assumption about local search is that Google lookups on smartphones dominate traffic, you wouldn’t be alone. But now comes a new consumer survey (n=500 U.S. adults) from Ignite Visibility that presents a number findings that appear to upend the conventional wisdom about local search. Some surprising findings. Some of these seemingly contrarian include:
What is your favorite way to search for local businesses? Some of these findings are surprising, especially: nearly 60% prefer local search on the desktop and WhitePages.com is the most trusted source for local business information. There’s a likely explanation for this, which i discuss below. One negative review a deal breaker. The survey did find that respondents relied on Google (70%) more than other search engines for local business lookups. And it found that reviews were very influential in purchase decision-making. One negative review would be enough to “stop them from calling a local business.” In most other surveys, some critical ratings confer credibility on the broader set of reviews for the business in question. Roughly 55% of respondents spent an hour or less considering local businesses online before taking action of some kind (i.e., making a phone call). Beyond reviews, these respondents relied most heavily on the GMB “business description, followed by quality photos (11.8%) and quality videos (6.9%).” When you reach out to a local business, what contact method do you prefer the most? Why we should care. There are reports published daily about consumer and advertiser behavior, with the majority of them generated for PR purposes. That doesn’t mean they’re invalid, but no single survey should be relied upon. We should look for consensus and consistent findings. The likely explanation for some or much of the data in the Ignite Visibility survey is the demographic and, to a lesser degree, geographic profile of respondents. Roughly 60% of the 500 people who filled out this online survey were from the South and the Midwest. But more importantly, about 90% of respondents were over 55 years old, with 56% of that group over 65 years old. Less than 2% of respondents were under age 35. A 65 year old is much less likely to prefer voice search and mobile devices to the PC and probably less likely to use social media. They’re also inclined to use the phone for local business communication compared to messaging. I’m sure we could find many 65+ year olds who defied these generalizations. But it’s safe to say there are material differences between user behaviors of different generations. The post Nearly 60% prefer PC to smartphones, but there’s a catch, local search survey finds appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/33doyu0 We all know the potential trouble associated with expectations: If you expect something to turn out a certain way —... The post Don’t Let Go of Expectations … Put Them to Work in Your Marketing appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/2yzJcJR
By 2022, there will be thousands of jobs available in the warehousing industry. Warehousing is an attractive industry for many workers. The job outlook is healthy, many warehousing jobs don’t require a higher degree, and — as long as you’re able to lift heavy objects and operate machinery — the training is simple. However, warehousing jobs have their disadvantages. The biggest downfall is the safety risks — employees can work at high heights and with dangerous equipment. This is the perfect formula for a serious injury. Whether you’re a warehouse owner or employee, it’s important to know the safety tips
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Did you know that 88% of customers won’t return to a website if they have a bad experience? Whether your site continually crashes or your media won’t load, bad user experience can result in decreased website and app traffic and even sales loss. But user experience encompasses more factors than just the general performance of your website and app. With technology increasing every year, it’s important to implement some of these tech advances toward your website and app. These technology advances improve your user’s experience and inspire them to come back to your website. Here are 9 UX trends and
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The average business spends between 40% and 80% of gross annual income and employee wages. While your employees are an integral part of your business success, there are ways your staff can take advantage of you. Time theft is one of the most common examples. Time theft is when an employee receives payment for work or time that they did not do. The most common example is when the employee is clocked in but doesn’t work. Instead, they perform another task, take a break while still clocked in, or are just lazy while on the clock. Your staff member can
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35% of small businesses are an LLC. Are you ready to start your own business? You probably think forming an LLC is the smartest way to legally operate your business. There’s a good reason why an LLC is a popular business entity to create. The LLC process is easy, affordable, and your business receives plenty of protection. But LLCs differ from other business entities in many ways, from the formation to the operation and even the taxation. How does an LLC work? How do you apply for one? This guide offers a look at forming a limited liability company, the
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90% of mid-size and large businesses offer medical benefits to their employees. Are you looking into health insurance for your staff? Providing health insurance will improve employee retention and will make you a competitive business to work for, especially when health insurance is becoming more expensive and many people can’t afford individual coverage. However, the process of comparing plans can be arduous, especially if you don’t understand the rules and the best options. Fortunately, there’s a way to simplify the insurance shopping process. Here’s the best way to find business health insurance with some helpful advice to know. Hire an
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Approximately 543,000 businesses are formed each month. Did you recently start a business? Congratulations! The road to entrepreneurship will bring blessings and challenges. One of the first challenges that all business owners will have to overcome is financing their business. In the beginning stages of your business, you won’t earn enough profit to cover your overhead expenses. This is why it’s essential to have a reliable financing plan set in place. It’s best to look at the different business financing options and know which one works best for your business and your financial situation. If you’re wondering how to finance
via ShoeMoney https://ift.tt/2OBBjcz As an advertiser, it always feels like the holiday season is abnormally long. It starts in August when I’m initiating conversations with our clients about the upcoming holidays and what it means for them. The majority of my clients are small businesses with small budgets, making this an important time of year. Not only do we have to be careful with our spend, but the revenue that is generated during this season is crucial. A lot of the accounts I work with will feel a strain in their business if they don’t earn enough during the holidays to help them make it through the slower months. The unique constraints that small businesses face with advertising carry over to the holiday season, which is why planning your calendar, knowing what you’re measuring and being intentional with your budget are so important. CalendarOne of the challenges of running a small account during the holiday season is planning out exactly which campaigns you will run when. There are three main ways I approach the calendar. Use historical dataFirst, use all the data you have access to in order to identify what worked last year and what didn’t. We have a client that is in the hospitality space and has been with us for three holiday seasons. We have a lot of data about what has worked in the past, and we use it to identify the platforms we want to use as well as similar campaigns that we want to run every year. If you don’t have data from last season, use what you do have to make an informed guess. A caveat here is to ensure you aren’t looking only at last-click data or return on ad spend at the campaign level. Looking at purchase path and assisted revenue is important when identifying what you deem successful. If a specific campaign plays an important role at the beginning of the purchase path, cutting it is going to affect overall revenue. Another important item to keep in mind is any major changes in your audience or offerings over the course of the year. Ask yourself if you can really make the assumption that what worked last year will likely work again if there have been major platform or audience changes. This also applies if a new competitor is in your space. Trim it downChances are, you don’t have the budget to do everything that you want to do. It is the reality with small accounts, there isn’t enough money to go around. The last thing you want is to end up with a low performing holiday campaign because budget was spread too thin. There are three things to keep in mind when trimming your campaigns down – budget, capacity and creative. First, score your ideal campaigns according to priority. For us, high priority campaigns are those that have played the biggest role in affecting the overall bottom line – a combination of direct and assisted revenue. Look at costs from the season last year, take into account rises in cost-per-click (CPC) and the typical length of the season for the business. Some of our clients only run holiday ads from Nov. 11 through Dec. 10, and others run from mid-October through December. You additionally want to take into account any extra budget you may need for Black Friday or Cyber Monday, assuming you participate. Assign your campaigns their ideal budget alongside their priority and look critically at what does and does not fit. Second, look at the business’s overall capacity. We have clients who are two-person businesses, and although demand exists we know that once they hit capacity, they physically cannot create or sell any more stock. Take this into account when allocating out what you will and will not run. Is there a point where this will happen for you during the season? Finally, there is a chance that some of your top-performing and ideal campaigns will require new creative for this year, or even midway through the season. Some creative can be reused year-over-year, but you generally want something new to avoid ad exhaustion, as small businesses can have small audiences. If a high scoring campaign that you really want to run needs new creative, chances are something else will have to go, especially if creating that asset costs additional budget. Chart it outOnce you have a plan ironed out, create yourself and your team a GANNT chart with details about execution. We have clients that add our digital marketing component into their larger GANNT charts and while it is excellent to see where digital fits in the overall picture, we find it extraordinarily helpful to maintain our own copy. This is also important as with smaller clients, they will typically have one point of contact, one team member who is going to be helping with their whole holiday campaign. I’ll hop in for strategy discussions, but the implementation and actual running of the campaign is up to a single person. That can leave a lot of room for error, and an individualized GANNT chart combined with Asana tasks detailing starts/stops/finishes helps us run smoothly throughout the season. To recap:
AnalyticsWhen evaluating the success of your campaign, we stick with the metrics that were used the year prior in order to evaluate year-over-year growth, which is our biggest KPI within the holiday season. While we will look at return on ad spend (ROAS), increases in overall revenue generated is our primary goal. There is an exception to this, we will use ROAS as a success metric if a client sells out of inventory each season. If we helped them sell out faster while spending less on ads, then that is a success. One note about analytics is that it is so important to tag and name your campaigns properly. Use UTM tags that align with not only the platform and type of ad, but the holiday season. You’re doing future you a big favor by tagging your campaigns and naming them in a way that allows for easy future comparisons. To recap:
BudgetBudgets are a hot topic these days. From stories about Google Ads not respecting their own twice a day budget rule to increasing CPCs across the board, there’s always something to be thinking about. AudienceOne of the best ways to ensure that you don’t spend all your budget is focusing on smaller audiences that you hypothesize will drive revenue. If you have a limited budget for the season, focus spend on proven remarketing and email lists. This is especially important during the sale periods, where customers who know you and have previously engaged with your business are more likely to purchase. This is a great way to approach Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You can also use lookalike audiences of people who have purchased in past years to narrow down your targeting for top of funnel campaigns. Know your best performing daysIf you have historical data from last season, use it to determine the start time of your holiday sprint. If you’re seasonal, when did traffic return last year? When did purchases rise? Are there certain days of the week or hours of the day that are more profitable? To maximize your budget, look at all of this information and determine when to start your holiday campaigns, whether or not to advertise seven days a week, and where you should be using bid adjustments to maximize revenue. An example of a seasonal client analytics is below. The holiday traffic came to their site this year earlier than we anticipated. We were going to run ads beginning Nov. 12 but looking at the rise in organic traffic in early October, we decided to run an early bird campaign and have seen a jump in year-over-year revenue as a result of paying attention to the early spike. Use a script to help you manageThe final budget tip for the season is to avoid that pesky overspending in Google Ads by using a budget script. This piece of advice comes from Duane Brown of Take Some Risk, who recommends this script to limit overspending. The one caveat is that you do have to remember to re-activate what gets paused the next day, either through another script or a rule. Using a script to ensure your daily budgets don’t get out of control is a helpful way to maximize results throughout the season and prevent Google Ads from taking away your budgetary control. To recap:
Season recapOne of the best things that you can do for your future self is to make notes as you go. What worked, what didn’t, what UTM tags you used, your GANNT charts, and why you made the choices you did. We always think we will remember what we did with our calendars, how we managed success and what budgets we used and why, but instead of starting over every season, keep notes so that when you’re planning your 2020 campaigns you have something to refer back to. The post How to make a holiday shopping campaign for low budget accounts appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2KL7TYm |
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