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Four ways to use marketing feedback loop to optimize SEO efforts

Four ways to use marketing feedback loop to optimize SEO efforts

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four-ways-to-use-marketing-feedback-loop-to-optimize-seo-efforts

This is a marketing strategy that may change everything you know about content marketing and SEO.

The customer feedback loop is an effective way to improve your offerings to your customers and modify what they get based on their feedback. It’s a business strategy that has been in existence for quite some time, but here, it’s refined towards content marketing and SEO.

Surely, there are ways you can make use of one of the most effective business and marketing strategy in human existence. And it’ll improve your content marketing and SEO efforts and help grow your brand. I’ll be taking a deeper look into the feedback loop, how it works in marketing and how you can apply this to your content marketing and SEO efforts.

What is a marketing feedback loop?

Firstly, let’s try to understand what marketing feedback loop is and how it works in the traditional marketing world. Done correctly, and with a well documented and measured process, the marketing feedback loop can improve your content marketing and SEO results.

According to HubSpot author, Caroline Forsey,

“A feedback loop is a process in which the outputs of a system are circled back and used as inputs. .. this refers to the process of using customer or employee feedback to create a better product or workplace.”

Marketers will understand that there are gems to be found in the feedback their businesses and products receive online. Both the positive and negative feedback you get, if utilized properly, can significantly transform how customers perceive and interact with your brand.

A marketing feedback loop is created when a business utilizes the responses they attract from a campaign effort or a product on the social web, and this can be later utilized in their marketing efforts. This may also include feedbacks from surveys and research campaigns.

Here, we’ll look at how it can be utilized to improve content marketing and SEO efforts.

How to create opportunities marketing feedback loop

Identifying opportunities for marketing feedback loop is just as important as how to make it work for you. Customers will take to social media to raise concerns or praises about your products and services where potential customers are actively participating in discussions that will determine whether or not to choose you over the competition.

Naturally, you’ll incorporate praises about your services into your testimonial campaigns to promote your business. These content are easily seen. Negative feedback, on the other hand, is where the treasure lies. And you will almost always miss them.

Below, let’s take a look at ways to identify marketing feedback loop and ultimately how you use it to improve your content marketing and SEO efforts.

  • Necessary tools: The first step to identifying opportunities for feedback loop is to actively monitor mentions about your brand on the web. This includes social media, blogs, and forums. In this case, the right tools, and people are what you need. Some tools to employ may include Mention, Radian6 and setting up Google Alerts for known names/keywords (or phrases) your brand is associated with.
  • Surveys: What’s better than the opportunity to secure valuable feedback? One that is solicited. Implementing surveys can help you to elicit feedback from your users right before they share it themselves. This will give room for you to identify potential issues and address them before they become problems.
  • The right person/team: Is someone on your team who determines how customers’ feedback should be responded to and what department gets to see and utilize it. This individual is responsible for its proper documentation as well. Naturally, they should be working very closely with the marketing department.
  • Interpreting constructive and negative customer feedback: Most times, when emotions run high with customers, constructive criticisms may come off as negative feedback. This may be perceived as an attack on your brand if care is not taken to analyze the issue — leaving you with a missed opportunity to improve on both SEO and content efforts. Instead of making a blanket judgment on the surface and writing of the complainant as a troll, look closely to identify what others may agree within their feedback. There, you’ll find your next content fodder and SEO hack.

How significant are feedback loops to content marketing and SEO?

Customers’ feedback can be looped into the whole brand experience output, which includes user experience(UX), answering the right questions on your website (enabling for richer content experience and broadens keyword opportunities).

Getting content marketing and SEO benefits from implementing feedback loop in your marketing would be a successful effort if done the right way. The following procedures will not only ensure you’re creating a better experience for your users but also gaining SEO advantage in the process.

Using a feedback loop to improve SEO – UX improvements

The most significant drawback to most businesses’ web presence is the user experience, and Google — growing ever-smarter with its constant algorithmic updates — is now effective at scoring a website’s rankings based on overall UX score. The best way for businesses to know how their UX measures up is through direct feedback from those using it. Here, customer feedback can be looped to the design team who can improve upon the website feel and accessibility. The result is a website with better UX and improved search rankings.

A feedback loop can prevent worthless content efforts

Say your content marketing team have been working tirelessly, analyzing trends and interviewing industry experts just to improve visibility and rankings. But the result is slow or abysmal. Here, the marketing team should be tasked to score through the complaints that have been left by your customers and come up with problem-solving content to line up your content calendar. This will not only directly address your users concerns but will help you see improved content marketing efforts.

Where have feedback loops improved SEO efforts?

In 2018, I and my partner at Effective Inbound Marketing, Ayodeji Onibalusi conducted a survey asking people to go visit our website and give feedback about what should be improved on. Majority of the responders wanted us to improve navigation and some others wanted us to produce more marketing content on the blog.

We incorporated the feedback loop by upgrading our content output and introduced breadcrumbs that’ll show the users how they navigated our website. These improvements saw our Alexa ranking move from 850,000 in December of 2018 to 272,000 as of today (August 2019) and our navigation improvement saw our users spend more time on site, dropping bounce rate by 50% and also increasing the number of pages visited per user. This has trickled down to our rankings, with terms like “Amazon” and “Russian Marketing” now driving users to our website.

Three takeaways from this

  • The smallest feedback loop implemented can have a significant impact on SEO
  • When implementing feedback loops, consider users satisfaction first
  • A feedback loop can be equally effective if solicited from users

The right way to use a marketing feedback loop to improve SEO

Getting marketing feedback loop right shouldn’t be tricky if you follow best practices. The core purpose of a marketing feedback loop is to use constructive complaints from your customers to improve your content marketing and SEO efforts. This can be accomplished by identifying their pain-points and incorporating this into your content and SEO campaigns.

Successful marketing feedback loop must follow these rules to positively have an impact on content marketing and SEO.

Is timely

Customers feedback should be looped to the right department as quickly as possible. Ideally, the customer should already get a response within the first hour, on the same channel. If it’s worth incorporating into a content, your content marketing team should already have a well-thought-out long-form content that addresses critical factors and answers questions such as:

– Was the complaint legitimate?

– Would other customers face this same issue?

– Was there a solution in place before?

– How did the company help the customer resolve the complaint?

– What did the company do prevent future customers from experiencing the same?

The medium of feedback should remain the same

Marketers should not make the mistake of addressing issues on different channels from where feedback originated from. Instead of providing a solution to a problem, this may escalate situations as the customer may assume you’re being defensive and trying to manipulate the situation.

If complaints are generated on social media, the complaints should be acknowledged on the same medium. Then support can take it up from there either through DMs or tickets. After which marketing feedback loop should be implemented once there is satisfaction, and then a campaign can be created out of it.

Must address concerns generated through implemented changes

For example, if users complain about the inability to access your products due to lack of breadcrumbs and poor navigation features — like the absence of a search tool, a short term solution may be to point them to categories or help them identify tags. But going further to introduce the features that’ll create a better experience would serve a longer-term purpose.

Changes implemented may be the focus of marketing feedback loop campaign

If the above approach is implemented, then a content marketing campaign around the customer’s feedback and the success achieved would be a welcome step. This would not only help attract more users through content marketing but would also show your brand as a listening one.

Conclusion

Getting content marketing and SEO right is critical to the success of your business if you’re competing online. Then the goal is to discover strategies that’ll keep your efforts successful and help you serve your users better. Marketing feedback loop helps you get this done.

Have you tried using a marketing feedback loop to optimize your SEO efforts? What results did you get?

Femi Haastrup is Founder and CEO of Femtrup LLC. He can be found on Twitter @Femihaastrup.

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Don’t Let Digital Marketing Mistakes Derail Your Business – mySanAntonio.com

Don’t Let Digital Marketing Mistakes Derail Your Business – mySanAntonio.com

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In this online-consumer age, it can make or break growth and survival.


4 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Let’s face it: We live in a technology-driven world, and digital marketing has in many ways surpassed traditional channels. With consumers now turning to the internet for every question they have, it’s easy to understand why thoughtful digital marketing can make or break a business. Without it, any company is as good as dead in the water. 

This necessitates not only the implementation of savvy tactics, but a knowledge of what pitfalls to avoid ahead of time. Here’s how to avoid the kinds of digital marketing mistakes that can derail your brand faster than a mouse click. 

You’ll Never Reach Your Goals You Don’t Set

This might seem obvious, but it’s amazing how many brands out there look at digital marketing as something to just dip their toes into. Setting up a bunch of social media accounts and throwing a few hashtags out there with the hopes they’ll catch fire won’t provide much benefit if there’s not a clearly defined goal behind it. 

Maybe that goal is increased traffic to the brand’s website or generating more potential leads through mobile. Whatever the case may be, measurable goals will help to establish a common connection with your audience and drive all future strategy.

Related: How to Land the Digital Marketing Job of Your Dreams

Understand Your Audience’s Needs

It goes without saying that your customers are the lifeblood of your business, so failing to understand what they want will make any digital marketing efforts pointless. Even the most well-thought out and catchy campaign will fall flat if it doesn’t resonate with the intended consumer, or worse, misses the target audience altogether. Everything from use of language in content to assessing how the hypothetical customer uses digital media should factor into your brand’s marketing approach. Take the time to dig into your audience analysis and find out what motivates them.

Churn Out Content With a Purpose

Internet users are constantly eating up content, but the content that gets shared and earns rankings love from Google has a real identity. Search-engine algorithms are constantly evolving, and it’s imperative that content be distinctive if it’s going to benefit a brand’s digital marketing efforts. Well-crafted content should say something that touches on your goals and offers something valuable to your intended audience.  

Staying on top of trends and the competition is equally vital. Ask yourself, “Is now the right time to use this tactic to connect with my audience?” The answer may not always be yes. Keeping all this in mind as you craft content will result in more lead conversions, rather than it falling flat. 

Related: Top 5 Digital Marketing Strategies of 2019

Track the ROI of Your Marketing Efforts

What your digital marketing ROI looks like is going to be different from other brands. What all businesses have in common, though, is the need to track their efforts to maximize yield. Refining your SEO approach and using utilizing an AdWords strategy similar to PPC Pro may translate to actual leads, but understanding the data is key to maintaining that success. 

What you don’t want to do is apply a “set it and forget it” approach to your digital campaigns. This doesn’t mean that everything must be checked and monitored every hour of the day, but regular observation and maintenance is necessary. There’s no shortage of analytics tools out their to help, so don’t be scared to try different ones and determine what helps your business accrue maximum ROI.  

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Trudeau’s Liberals sketch out their campaign strategy: Tout their record but beware economic ‘anxiety’

Trudeau’s Liberals sketch out their campaign strategy: Tout their record but beware economic ‘anxiety’

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OTTAWA—Liberal strategists gathered at a downtown Ottawa hotel in mid-July, the inner circle who will steer the party’s re-election hopes.

Among the 50 or so present were veterans of the party’s dramatic win in 2015 — “getting the band back together,” quipped one participant — as well as new faces.

The group, which included regional representatives, talked about the current state of politics, the mood on the ground, digital strategies and how they saw the campaign playing out.

Jeremy Broadhurst, the party’s campaign director, describes the discussion as “let’s all talk about some of these challenges, the difference of 2015 to 2019, the advances in the art and science of campaigning.

“It was a good chance to challenge some of our assumptions — let’s challenge our common wisdom,” he said in an interview.

Justin Trudeau spoke to the assembled crowd, touting the government’s accomplishments but underscoring that the job is not done, themes he would touch on when he spoke to Liberal candidates who gathered in Ottawa several weeks later.

In the session, which stretched over a couple of days, there was a recognition that it wasn’t enough to simply replicate the formula from four years ago. The political rivals are different. The domestic and international scenes are different. And critically, the Liberals are no longer the third-place party. They’ve been in government in four years, with a record, good and bad.

The Star has talked with more than a dozen Liberal strategists about the coming campaign. They paint a picture of a party that is optimistic, that had been getting the wind back in its sails after a bruising start to the year.

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    They are cognizant of polls that indicate a close race with the Conservatives. They remain wary about several factors: economic anxiety, populist politics and shifting moods. Yet they saw the potential for gains, notably in Quebec, perhaps Ontario.

    And then Mario Dion lobbed a grenade. In an August report, the ethics commissioner concluded that Trudeau broke ethics rules last year when he applied political pressure on then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to intervene in the criminal prosecution against SNC-Lavalin.

    It’s a serious blow for the Liberals and adds a wild card to the coming campaign, just as they get ready to go back to voters and ask for their support.

    Read more:

    Can the team that helped Scheer beat Bernier win him the election?

    How the NDP is trying to find its feet before the federal campaign

    How the Green party election machine is gearing up for its biggest campaign

    The Liberal election machine pulled off a near-miracle in 2015.

    The party started the campaign in third place with fewer than 40 seats, the result of two poor election showings under leaders Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.

    Enter Justin Trudeau, the oldest son of Pierre Trudeau. The son embarked on his own political career in 2008 when he was elected MP for the Montreal riding of Papineau. He was elected Liberal leader in 2013.

    Because of his political pedigree and his time as MP, Trudeau was no stranger to the public eye. Still, the Conservatives called the 2015 election early, betting that a marathon campaign would give the rookie Liberal leader more chances to stumble.

    After all, Trudeau was up against Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a veteran campaigner going into his fifth federal election as party leader, and the New Democrats, led by Thomas Mulcair, who were up in the polls and seemed to have a shot at governing.

    Harper’s gamble failed. The more voters saw of Trudeau, the more they liked. True to his “sunny ways” slogan, Trudeau was optimistic on the campaign trail, vowing to help middle-class Canadians through measures like the child benefit and an income-tax cut. In his final week, the Liberal leader drew overflow crowds.

    When the ballots were counted, the Liberals had a majority, with 184 seats.

    This election, the Liberals intend to draw on familiar themes and backroom personalities in hopes of a repeat.

    Broadhurst will lead the Liberal campaign. The veteran Liberal was the party’s national director in 2015 served as chief of staff to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. He has been with Liberal leaders dating back to Bill Graham, many of those when the party was in the political wilderness. He is credited with rebuilding key parts of the party apparatus that helped lay the foundation for victory in 2015.

    Jeremy Broadhurst will lead the Liberal campaign.

    Olivier Duchesneau, another longtime Liberal, is the deputy national campaign director. Duchesneau was until recently chief of staff to Jean Yves Duclos, the minister of families, children and social development. He had previously served in the Prime Minister’s Office and party headquarters.

    Kate Purchase, who until recently was executive director of communications and planning in Trudeau’s office, is the “chief content strategist.” The role essentially encompasses all of the content of the campaign — policy, communications, issues management and advertising. Purchase moved to this role in mid-August.

    Brian Clow, a senior strategist in the PMO, will steer the party’s rapid responses day to day, including the reactions to opposition policy announcements. It’s similar to his role in the last campaign. Clow is a Queen’s Park veteran who worked as an adviser to then Premier Kathleen Wynne. He came to Ottawa after the 2015 election.

    Tom Pitfield, a long-time Trudeau friend, will oversee the party’s digital strategy, reprising a role he played in the federal election campaign. He is the founder and CEO of Data Sciences. He is also the chairman and co-founder of Canada 2020, a progressive think tank.

    The Liberals credited their evolving data prowess with helping them win in 2015, saying the information helped shape decisions on advertising, even last-minute shifts in Trudeau’s schedule.

    Today, the data tracks what Liberal candidates are doing and hearing at the doorstep, Broadhurst said.

    “A national campaign has to serve a really simple purpose. It’s to help 338 local campaigns. You do that in a lot of different ways. But how can you help those campaigns if you don’t know what’s going on in these campaigns,” Broadhurst said.

    “There’s a flow of communication up. We’re hearing what’s going on at the doorstep and we will adjust accordingly … The most important feedback is what is worrying people, what’s on their minds,” he said.

    “It’s helping us pierce through our own bubble.”

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      Nothing beats a volunteer talking at the door or on the phone, Broadhurst said. But “digital door-knocking” is important and will be integral to the strategy. “More and more people live their lives on their phone and digital spaces so you want to have the conversations there as well.”

      Matt Stickney, former chief of staff to Carla Qualtrough, minister of public services and procurement, is responsible for pulling together the national field team, expanding a role he had in 2015 working in British Columbia.

      The Liberals take pride in the strength of their field organization. It was built up before the 2015 vote to help offset the Conservatives’ fundraising advantage. “In a dollar-for-dollar battle, we were going to lose,” one organizer said.

      There’s a question mark hanging over the role of one prominent personality: Gerald Butts. Butts, a Trudeau friend and confidant, served as principal secretary until his resignation in February as the SNC-Lavalin controversy swirled. But the party said he had been acting as a “senior” adviser in the Liberal campaign this summer, a role that will continue for the campaign.

      Party staff of about 100 will be bolstered by another 60 or so at campaign headquarters, including some now working for various cabinet ministers, who will take leave from their day jobs to work on the campaign. Just weeks before the expected campaign launch, the party has nominated 259 candidates, 79 short of a full slate.

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      Several Liberals sketched out the strategy Canadians can expect. The first priority is to remind voters of their record. They’ll talk up the economy — the steady growth and low unemployment. They’ll highlight Liberal measures to put a price on pollution to combat climate change.

      They will remind voters about “significant measures” such as the Canada child benefit and an income tax cut, measures done early in the mandate that may have faded from memories.

      “That’s real money … but life still feels hard,” said one strategist. “There are new challenges all the time.

      “We need to approach this as a fresh election and have a vision that is good for 2019,” the strategist said.

      That’s where the second part of the strategy comes — the rollout of new offerings in a campaign platform. That could include an announcement on pharmacare and health-care measures, along with skills training and other proposals to address economic anxiety.

      “There’s a lot of anxiety, especially around the digital transformation, changes in technology, what does automation mean?” said Navdeep Bains, the MP for Mississauga-Malton and minister of innovation, science and economic development.

      “But we also acknowledge that more needs to be done. And that’s the case we will be making,” said Bains, a co-chair of the party’s national campaign committee.

      Navdeep Bains is the MP for Mississauga-Malton and minister of innovation, science and economic development.

      The job of crafting that case fell in large part to Liberal MPs Mona Fortier and Ralph Goodale, co-chairs of the national platform committee. Last September, they began assembling ideas for the 2019 platform, an effort that involved consulting caucus members, citizens and outside experts. They came up with some 200 ideas that touched on the economy, social justice and the environment.

      “We want to offer Canadians what we’ve been doing for the last four years,” Fortier said. “But we know the political environment has changed. The world we know has changed.”

      On climate change, she says the party “has done a lot. But we don’t have a choice. We have to do more.”

      The committee’s work is largely done and the party has been whittling down that list of ideas into the core proposals that will make up the platform.

      The final piece of the election strategy will be to motivate progressives to vote for the Liberal brand and woo them away from the New Democrats and Green party. That is not a small challenge.

      If sunny ways won the day in 2015, the forecast is decidedly more mixed this time. Four years of governing have saddled the Liberals with baggage. Some is the inevitable result of governing, but some wounds have been self-inflicted.

      The Liberal government broke some prominent election vows on balancing the budget — the 2019 budget forecast a $16.8 billion deficit for the current fiscal year — and sweeping electoral reform. (Trudeau declared it was no longer a priority for Canadians.)

      The fallout from Trudeau’s star-crossed trip to India in 2018 — with criticisms about a light agenda, and images of the Trudeau family in traditional Indian dress — lingers on. An ill-considered family vacation to the Aga Khan’s island earned Trudeau his first rebuke from the ethics commissioner.

      The revival of the SNC-Lavalin controversy could cause disgruntled progressives to stay home or vote for another party.

      Pollster Frank Graves said the success of the Liberals in 2015 rested largely on the support of progressive voters keen to end the Conservatives’ 10 years in power.

      Four years later, the coming election landscape looks “very different,” Graves said in an interview. For starters, a government that hasn’t faced a vote-killing issue like a recession or national unity crisis finds itself in a “tenuous” position,” he said.

      “A government that frankly should be sipping beer as it kind of cruises to a next majority is finding itself in a much tougher position than you would have expected,” he said.

      “The Liberals have shed a lot of votes,” Graves said, citing an erosion of support among men, college-educated voters and working-class voters.

      Trudeau is a good campaigner and debater, with skills honed in his town-hall sessions, Graves said. But he’ll have to work to shore up his credentials with working-class Canadians, he said.

      Still, several factors work in the Liberals’ favour, Graves said. They include sagging support for the NDP and the potential impact of the People’s Party of Canada, led by former Conservative MP Maxime Bernier. While the PPC is polling in the single digits, Graves thinks the party’s support is being understated, which could eat into Conservative votes.

      Finally, Graves says the “biggest asset” for the Liberals is the Doug Ford government at Queen’s Park and its unpopular budget cuts that continue to make headlines.

      The federal Liberals waste no opportunity to draw attention to the Ford cuts and imply that a similar situation would play out in Ottawa if the Conservatives got elected.

      The Liberals know they are not likely to win any support from the rock-solid base of Conservative supporters — relatively stable at between 5.2 million and 5.8 million votes in recent elections.

      They have to draw their support from centre-to-left voters, who may also consider the NDP or Greens. Support for Green Leader Elizabeth May could hurt the Liberals.

      It’s in the Conservatives’ interests to persuade Liberal votes to stay home or vote for another party. The task for the Liberals is to counter that. They have to motivate voters to cast a ballot for the Liberal candidate.

      “A huge element of this campaign is going to be voter turnout,” Broadhurst said. “We want to build up a broad coalition of voters that we were able to bring together in 2015, we want to grow it even beyond that,” he said.

      “The goal of the Conservatives is to dismantle that group of voters who came together, largely through discouraging them voting and participating at all,” Broadhurst said. “We need to get people engaged, excited and feeling that it’s something that matters to their country, to their own household.”

      Bruce Campion-Smith

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      The race is on: Canada’s campaign features planes, songs and… vasectomies

      The race is on: Canada’s campaign features planes, songs and… vasectomies

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        The race is on: Canadas campaign features planes, songs and... vasectomies

        By Steve Scherer

        OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday formally launched a six-week campaign for re-election in which he and his rivals will crisscross the country in planes and on buses to try to win over voters.

        “Canadians will head to the polls on Oct. 21,” Trudeau told reporters after Governor General Julie Payette, the acting head of state, agreed to dissolve parliament.

        Trudeau and his main opponent, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, are in a dead heat according to national polls, but smaller parties on the right and left could also play key roles as spoilers or kingmakers on election day.

        Canada’s official campaign period has often been fraught with unexpected turns that can lead to unforeseen outcomes. The ruling Liberals were in third place when the 2015 campaign started, but pulled off an outright victory.

        “The formal campaign absolutely has a history of dramatically changing outcomes,” said Paul Adams, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and a former political reporter.

        The five upcoming leaders’ debates are important, too, Adams said, with the first scheduled for Thursday, though without Trudeau, who declined an invitation. Trudeau will do only three of the five debates.

        All the candidates had planned appearances at battleground ridings, or districts, to talk about climate change, the economy, and other hotbutton issues.

        But before Trudeau could start his campaign in Vancouver, British Colombia (B.C.) on Wednesday evening, he had to deal with a barrage of questions regarding a long-running scandal involving allegations he tried to influence his former justice minister’s handling of a corporate corruption case.

        On the tarmac before flying to his first rally of the day in Quebec, Scheer said Trudeau “has lost the moral authority to govern”.

        Then Scheer’s plane took off only to be diverted by fog, forcing everyone to jump on buses for more than an hour in order to reach his first campaign event on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

        ROCK-N-ROLL

        Trudeau and Scheer both have campaign jets with their names emblazoned on the fuselage. Only Scheer, however, has an original campaign tune penned by Jim Vallance, the songwriter who helped Canadian rock star Bryan Adams pen “Summer of ’69.”

        The electric guitar-driven song is called “Get Ahead” and riffs off of Scheer’s “It’s time for you to get ahead” campaign slogan.

        The left-wing New Democrat Party (NDP) packed both staff and journalists onto one bus. The party, which led the pack at the start of the 2015 campaign but ended up coming in third place, is dipping in the polls and struggling to raise money this year.

        NDP leader Jagmeet Singh kicked off his campaign in London, Ontario, with 85 nominations still to make in order to field a candidate in each of Canada’s 338 ridings.

        “We’ve had some challenges but are ready to solve that and we will absolutely have candidates in every riding,” Singh said.

        Finally, a satirical political group that calls itself the Rhinoceros Party – but which is recognised by Canada’s federal election regulator as a registered party – said it plans to field a candidate to run against Maxime Bernier, the leader of the right-wing People’s Party of Canada (PPC).

        The Rhinoceros Party says it wants challenge the PPC leader in his own riding with their own candidate, also named Maxime Bernier.

        The Rhinoceros Party’s Bernier has made a mandatory vasectomy for men 16 years of age or older one of his campaign promises so that “Canada will be a world leader in the fight against climate change”, according to the website.

        The PPC’s Bernier, on the other hand, does not believe climate change is caused by human activity.

        (Additional reporting by David Ljunggren, Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Paul Simao)

        This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.

        Updated Date: Sep 12, 2019 03:11:41 IST


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        4 Ways Marketing Blog Content Can Grow a Law Practice

        4 Ways Marketing Blog Content Can Grow a Law Practice

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        4 Ways Marketing Blog Content Can Grow a Law Practice

        4 Ways Marketing Blog Content Can Grow a Law Practice

        Content marketing has been aggressively adopted in nearly every industry as a cost-effective way to increase brand awareness and develop new clientele. As is often the case with the legal industry, however, many firms have been hesitant to hop on board the content marketing train.  

        It’s no surprise that many law firms have been slow to adopt it – after all, it wasn’t until around 40 years ago that law firms were allowed to advertise at all. 

        “While legal content marketing does present its share of challenges, these challenges are nothing that can’t be addressed by a team of professional legal content writers who understand the law and the ethical issues that can arise,” said David Arato, JD, of Lexicon Legal Content, a content agency for law firms.

        For this reason, more and more firms have been turning to content marketing as a cost-effective way to connect with new clients and grow their businesses.

        1. Good Content Can Establish You as a Leader in Your Area of Practice

        Content marketing involves the publication of informative blogs, practice area pages, white papers, and other formats of content that are valuable to your potential clients. For this reason, a consistent and professionally managed campaign can establish your firm as an authority in your area of practice, whether that’s personal injury, criminal defense, medical malpractice, consumer protection, bankruptcy, family law, business law, or anything else. A useful article on this subject Infographic Design Tips Every Marketer Should Know

        As an attorney who has focused on a particular area of law, the public (and other lawyers) look to you as an expert in your field – even if your state bar prohibits you from explicitly calling yourself an “expert.” In this way, high-quality, compelling, and informative content can help bring in new clients and referral sources.

        2. Carefully Created Content Can Increase Your Rankings in the SERPs

        Google has made it clear that it rewards websites that are regularly updated with fresh content in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As a result, engaging in on-site content marketing can have a positive impact on your site’s SEO and ranking for the keywords your potential clients are searching for. 

        There are several tools you can use to determine keywords and keyword phrases you can target, including AnswerThePublic, Ahrefs, Google Ads, and Keyword Tool. Once you’ve identified some keywords you’d like to target, generate content incorporating those keywords – but be sure the keywords are integrated as natural language. 

        Google’s algorithm is getting smarter every day, and the company has explicitly identified “keyword stuffing” to be in violation of its quality guidelines.

        3. Content Can Create Connections with Potential Clients

        When people are looking for a lawyer, they typically have an issue that needs to be resolved. In fact, in some cases, legal consumers are in crisis and are dealing with some of the most stressful and difficult situations they will ever face. 

        Create content that directly answers the questions that your clients may be asking and that addresses their specific needs. It’s critical to remember that legal content marketing is not about talking to other lawyers or judges; it’s about connecting with the people who are looking to you for help. 

        Take mental inventory of the questions you have heard over and over in your law practice and generate content that answers those questions directly. Not only is this a good practice for search engine optimization (SEO), it also can create an instant connection with the people who are looking for the services you offer. 

        While the possibilities are endless, some examples of questions you may want to answer in the content you create include:

        • Do I need a lawyer for a first DUI?
        • Will my husband get the kids?
        • Is bankruptcy right for me?
        • Can I sue after a car accident?

        4. Sharable Content Can Expand Your Reach

        Creating a beautiful website, blogging, adding videos, and setting up professional social media accounts are all well and good, but it’s critical that you get people to visit your site and call your firm. Otherwise, you may as well have the best-looking billboard along the loneliest stretch of highway in the country. 

        Engaging in SEO, adding content, using PPC, and engaging on social media are all great ways of getting traffic to your site, but where content marketing really shines is when you get your network to share your content for you – for free! If you create compelling, shareable content that people find useful, there’s a good chance that they will share it with their connections, putting your firm’s brand in front of thousands of potential clients.

        Now That You Understand the Benefits of Content Marketing for Law Firms, How Do You Get Started?

        The information above should make it fairly clear that any law practice can benefit tremendously from a comprehensive content marketing campaign. Creating and implementing such a campaign can present significant challenges, particularly if you are an attorney who is busy practicing law. 

        Fortunately, there are legal content professionals out there who are qualified to help your firm get started and start reaping the benefits immediately. Here are seven content marketing tips for law firms to help you get started:

        • Take time to really figure out what your clients want and what they are worried about. Doing this will make sure your content marketing efforts are targeting the right people.
        • Focus on creating content that provides value to your potential clients.
        • Document your strategy. Make lists of the keywords you are targeting, potential content titles/topics, and a publishing calendar.
        • Commit to publishing quality content on a regular basis, and focus on creating evergreen content that will continue to drive traffic to your site over time.
        • Do not limit yourself to a particular content format. While blogging is certainly an easy way to get started, remember to consider creating white-papers, additional practice area pages, and videos. In addition, be aware of the fact that you can repurpose existing content across various formats – for example, a well-performing blog post can provide material for an infographic, video, or another additional piece of content.
        • Be certain to publish all of the content you create on your website and your social media accounts.
        • Set realistic expectations as to how much time you can spend on content creation. Many lawyers quickly realize that outsourcing their content marketing makes sense, especially considering the long-term return on their initial investment.

        Now that you’re aware of how content marketing can benefit law firms and how to get started, don’t delay! As an attorney, you’re in a great position to share what you know, educate the public, and grow your law practice.

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        7 B2B Marketing Strategies to Build Brand Awareness

        7 B2B Marketing Strategies to Build Brand Awareness

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        Whether your brand has been around for decades or is a new start-up, it’s important to continually build brand awareness. Even if you are a demonstrated industry leader like Cisco or Microsoft, brand awareness is critical to the success of your business.

        Why Brand Awareness Matters

        The contacts at your existing clients may be leaving or taking new roles, your market may be experiencing an uptick in new business ventures, your existing clients may not be aware of all your capabilities, or you may be targeting multiple departments in an organization that has silos. These are just a few reasons why brand awareness matters for B2B marketing.

        Strategies to Build Brand Awareness

        Below are 7 successful ways B2B marketers can build brand awareness:

        1. Build a Polished, Optimized B2B Website
        2. Launch a Targeted PPC Campaign
        3. Run Sponsored Updates on LinkedIn + Social Media
        4. Create Thought Leadership Content with Partners
        5. Approach Industry Publications with Guest Article Pitches
        6. Connect & Share Content from Industry Influencers
        7. Craft Retargeting Strategies for Website Visitors

        Now, let’s break each of these down a little bit further.

        1. Build a Polished, Optimized B2B Website

        We’ve mentioned before that simply having a website isn’t acceptable anymore. Whether your target market is 80 years old, 20 years old, or in between, the expectation is that you will have a professional website that looks current, functions properly, and provides the necessary information on your company’s products or services.

        As such, to increase brand awareness, you need an optimized, polished B2B web design for your organization. The design needs to be customized, professional, interactive, and quick to load for the user. Additionally, it must be optimized for search engines and the user experience. Search engine optimization is now an essential step in creating and maintaining a digital brand presence.

        1. Launch a Targeted PPC Campaign

        Pay-per-click campaigns run on search engines like Google and Bing are a terrific way to get your brand in front of prospects searching for your products or websites. You don’t need to allocate hundreds of thousands of dollars each month to PPC campaigns if they are set up and continually monitored. In the hands of an experienced expert who understands your target market’s buying intent, your PPC campaigns can be streamlined and an efficient use of your advertising budget.

        1. Run Sponsored Updates on LinkedIn + Social Media

        The awesome thing about running paid ads or sponsored updates on social media is the level of targeting available. If your ideal prospect is a software engineer at a SaaS company that has between 500 – 5,000 employees, you can run campaigns that target those specific users on a platform like LinkedIn.

        These sponsored updates and ads enable you to pay to promote your company’s thought leadership content, webinars, customer success stories, and white papers or guides to potential prospects that may not be familiar with your company or the products or services you provide. These prospects may not be in a buying stage yet, but by building brand awareness early on, when they are ready to start the buying process, your firm will be a recognized partner.

        1. Create Thought Leadership Content with Partners

        For B2B marketing, building awareness can be all in who you know sometimes. A wonderful way to leverage who you know in the industry is to create thought leadership content with a strategic partner. Collaborating with a strategic partner enables you to both contribute your expertise to a high-value piece of content. This can be a webinar, white paper, case study, interview, article, guide, podcast, or video.

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        Once you have crafted the content, you and your strategic partner will benefit from exposure to each other’s audience. You share and promote the content piece to your audience and your strategic partner does the same. This gives your brand and their brand double the exposure.

        1. Approach Industry Publications with Guest Article Pitches

        Looking to get more recognition among logistics professionals? Draft a thought leadership piece that will resonate with logistics professionals and pitch it to a publication with that specific readership. Similar to creating a content piece with a strategic partner, this type of content creation can be labor-intensive. However, the payoff can be significant.

        We’ve seen our clients get contacted for interviews in other publications and by prospects who read their article. These are just added bonuses to increased brand awareness.

        1. Connect & Share Content from Industry Influencers

        When done properly and strategically, connecting with industry influencers is another great way to build brand awareness. However, when done without tact or understanding, it can have a negative impact on your brand’s reputation. For this reason, it’s important to handle with finesse and diplomacy.

        For this B2B marketing strategy for building brand awareness, the first step is identifying potential influencers in your industry. These are not people with the most social followers. They are thought leaders. People that professionals in your industry really listen to.

        Once you have identified the influencers, engage with the content they are creating and sharing. This includes attending their webinars, downloading their content, commenting on their posts, sharing their content on your company’s social media, etc. In most cases, they will notice if you are doing it consistently. If you have a content piece that could use their insight or advice, ask them for it, feature them, and link to their website and social media. It doesn’t need to be a shameless plug for them, but can be a natural way to feature a thought leader.

        Don’t forget that you may have clients who are industry influencers!

        1. Craft Retargeting Strategies for Website Visitors

        Many marketers spend a ton of time, effort, and budget to get visitors to their B2B website but don’t put any effort into staying in front of a website visitor once they leave the website. A well-thought-out retargeting strategy for website visitors is the easiest way to continue to build brand awareness.

        Remember that many visitors to your website are in the very beginning stages of the sales process. They may just be looking around to see who provides the products and services, what types of products and services are available, or even learning whether they need these products or services. An ad retargeting strategy enables you to continue to show ads to website visitors who have left your website for the next 60 – 90 days. Even if the visitor has been to your B2B website only once, they will continue to see your brand.

        Building Brand Awareness & Passive Lead Nurturing

        When it comes to B2B sales, 89% of B2B buyers do online research and are 70% of the way through the decision-making process before they make contact with a company’s sales team (Source: Forbes).

        If your marketing team isn’t committed to building brand awareness, then you are likely losing out to your competition. If a prospect is 70% of the way through the decision-making process before they talk to your sales team, it’s simple to think of building brand awareness as a passive lead nurturing tool.

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        What to Do When your Campaign is Limited by Budget

        What to Do When your Campaign is Limited by Budget

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        Your campaign is limited by budget — what does this mean? 

        We’ve all seen the alert before:

        Some see it as a bad thing, some see it as an opportunity, and some just want that ugly red text to go away. When a campaign is limited by budget, here’s what’s happening: 

        • You’re missing out on traffic: Google is only able to enter you into a certain number of auctions based on your daily budget. If that budget is too low compared to your keywords’ search volume and average CPCs, your delivery will be limited, meaning fewer impressions and clicks.
        • You’re missing out on conversions: If your campaign is budget capped, you’re leaving conversions on the table! If you’re missing out on impressions and clicks, you’re definitely missing out on conversions. 
        • You’re letting competitors get a leg up: If you’re not showing up for a search, your competitor probably is. Whenever you’re limited by budget and not entering into as many auctions, your Brand name isn’t showing on the SERP as often for relevant queries. 

        What can you do to fix it? 

        Raise your budget

        The easiest way to fix this problem and get rid of the alert is by raising your budget. Google wants you to do this (more $ for them), so they make it pretty easy for you to see the impact of an extra $100 or $1,000 in spend. 

        In this example, Google is suggesting that we raise our daily budget to $7,500 to capture an additional 123 conversions per week at a comparable CPA. While these recommendations are usually pretty sound, it’s still good to check on performance and actual spend after making the change. 

        You can also calculate maximum potential spend manually if you’re looking for a more exact number. To do this, use a campaign’s Search IS Lost (Budget) to calculate total available impressions, then use CTR, CPC, and CVR/CPA to project potential spend and conversions if you increase spend. Here’s how that looks: 

        In this example, we’re missing out on 5% of IS due to budget, so the campaign could technically be bringing in around 274,000 impressions for this time period. Apply average CTR, CPC, and CPA to that impression total and you get the following potential increases: 

        • 202 additional clicks (274,416 x 1.47%)
        • $3,292 additional cost (202 x $16.32)
        • 10 additional conversions ($3,292 x $330 CPA)

        Calculating these increases, whether manually or with Google’s help, is super important if you’re pitching for more budget or need stakeholders to sign off on the increases. Nobody wants to approve spend increases without knowing the impact.

        💡 Pro Tip: Create CPA increase scenarios when running these kinds of analyses to account for fluctuations in efficiency. While CPA usually stays the same when you increase the budget for a capped campaign, that’s not always the case. 

        What if you can’t raise your budget? 

        If you’re strapped for cash and can’t increase your daily budget, don’t worry. Here are some ways to get rid of the alert and improve performance at the same time. 

        1. Lower your bids

          Lowering your bids usually leads to lower CPCs, which can do wonders for a fixed budget.


          Constant spend x lower CPCs = more clicks

          More clicks x constant CVR = more conversions

          Constant spend more conversions = lower CPA




          Look at keyword, geo, and device performance. Are there any areas that aren’t efficient and can be pulled back? Check out hour of day and day of week performance, too. Cut out the fat and focus your spend on your most efficient areas, and you might see something like this:

        By lowering bids in less efficient areas for one of our clients, we brought CPCs down significantly over the course of 4 months, which led to CPA and conversion volume improvements with mostly flat spend. 

        1. Test out Smart Bidding

        Don’t have time for manual bid adjustments? Try an experiment with a Smart Bidding strategy, like Maximize Conversions or Target CPA. Google will likely do the heavy lifting for you, adjusting bids for keywords, devices, audiences, and more to get you the most out of your limited budget. 

        Here’s what we saw when we switched 5-6 limited budget campaigns over to Smart Bidding when reducing spend after April: By adopting Smart Bidding, Google was able to keep conversion volume fairly flat, if not increase it, as we reduced spend. 

        💡 Check out more info about Smart Bidding here, and learn how to use campaign experiments when moving to Smart Bidding here.

        1. Break out an RLSA campaign

        If you’ve applied remarketing audiences as observations to your campaign, you might be seeing stronger performance from those past site visitors. If this is the case, you can duplicate your original campaign, only target your remarketing audiences, and allocate a certain amount of budget to that campaign. This will guarantee that a certain % of your budget goes to your top performing searchers, which will likely lead to a lower CPA. 

        You can do this with other audiences as well, like In-Market or Similar Audiences. If a certain group is performing well (or not well), separate them out and shift budget accordingly.

         Whether you’re looking to increase your daily budgets, or get more out of a fixed budget, these tips should help you improve performance either way. Looking for more PPC help? Check out our other posts or get in touch!

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        Prepare For Battle: A Paid Search Competitive Guide

        Prepare For Battle: A Paid Search Competitive Guide

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        One of the top questions we get as PPC marketers is, “what are our competitors doing?” It’s an important question, but one that can be difficult to answer.

        There is no sneak peek into a competitor’s AdWords account, no unblinded benchmarks, or quick plug-in formulas. However, paid search experts do love a challenge. We like to uncover all the data we can and piece together the clues. We know that researching and discovering your competitors is an essential step in better understanding the industry, the trends, and ultimately shaping your own paid search strategy.

        We’ve compiled our tricks, tips, and best practices for uncovering the competitive advantage.

        “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – Sun Tzu

        Know Thine Self

        Hidden within your Google and Bing accounts is a plethora of competitive data. Although we can’t see competitor’s account set-ups or exact budgets, search engines share data that show your performance in relation to your competitors.

        Auction Insights

        pasted image src 28

        Located at the campaign, ad group, or keyword level in the Google interface, the auction insights tab is an easy way to see where you stand against advertisers who entered the same auction as you.  That’s right, Google gives you names! In addition, Google offers six metrics to dig into: impression share, overlap rate, position above rate, top of page rate, abs. Top of page rate, outranking share. For full descriptions about these metrics, check out this resource, but for now let’s dive into one of our favorites.

        Search Impression Share

        pasted image src 27

        This KPI shows the performance of your ads in comparison to your competitors. It’s calculated as the number of impressions your ads received, divided by the total number of impressions your ad was eligible to receive, expressed in a percentage.The lower your percentage, the more opportunity you have to compete. We like this one because it can be directly impacted by factors other than increasing budget. Eligibility is factored by your targeting settings, bids, and quality score. There are a ton of optimizations you can make here to increase quality score and your chance of showing for more auctions –  writing relevant ad copy, testing the best landing pages, adding customized extensions. Google will reward you for creating the best possible user experience.

        Dig in even deeper by segmenting by time and device. Did a competitor suddenly start outranking you in a certain month? Is a competitor eating up mobile impression share over desktop? These types of questions can help determine strategic decisions for your own account. There are also scripts that can help you track this data over time.

        What’s a good way to get ideas in improving your customer experience? Put yourself in your target audiences’ shoes and do research to see what your competitors are doing.

        Know Thine Enemy

        What’s a great way to better understand your competitors? Straight up stalking!

        Determine your list of competitors, slip into incognito, and start Googling. Take note of your most valuable key head terms. Who else is showing up? What does their ad copy look like? Click through to the landing page?  What do they do well and how does that compare to your own landing pages?

        This research is more qualitative, but a picture is worth a thousand words. We’ve been able to get buy-in for testing or movement on much needed projects by simply showing our clients screenshots of competitor ad copy and landing pages. They weren’t interested in our data points or case studies. They could see the eye-catching ad copy or streamlined landing page. It’s an effective starting off point for future initiatives; we highly recommend it.

        Set up google alerts for your competitors, sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on social media. It can be a great way to monitor your competitors over time.

        There are a ton of tools that share competitive research. We like SEM Rush, SpyFU, and Moat. With these tools you can dig into research like competitor paid keyword lists, organic rankings, display creative, etc. However, no tool is perfect and we’d suggest utilizing this data in a broader sense as we’ve found it can be inaccurate. For instance, use it to see if there are keywords you should be bidding on, but don’t use it to set your advertising budget based on what your competitors are reported as spending.

        Know Thine Enemy

        Now that we know where we stand and what we’re up against, our more aggressive folks can take it a step further. The real question is to bid or not to bid – on our competitor’s brand keywords that is.  Some caveats here, with this strategy you should expect lower quality scores, higher bids, and a hungry budget. This is because Google rewards keywords that are most relevant to the searcher.

        Example: Our target audience is searching for Target, and you’re Walmart. Although you sell the same products, a person searching for Target likely wants to go to Target’s website. However, Walmart has an opportunity to get this person’s attention. If Walmart offers a promotion, coupon code, or perhaps shows some visually appealing products, it’s fair game if the person visit’s Walmart’s site vs. their originally intended Target destination.

        We don’t always recommend this strategy. You need to consider your priorities, budget, and goals, but we think it’s a worthwhile test. Our test recommendations? Create separate competitor campaigns so you can control budget. Customize your ad copy to call out your unique selling propositions and instill strong brand messaging. Carefully consider your landing page to improve time on site and encourage conversion. Monitor performance very closely.

        Don’t forget about upper funnel strategic plays. If your searchers are in the research phase, it’s likely they are learning about your competitors. It can be the ideal time to build brand awareness.  Create custom intent audience for Display and YouTube. Learn more here.

        Victory

        Improve paid search performance and push innovation by keeping up with your competitors. In an ever changing SERP landscape you’ll need the edge to fight for space, and in an ever shifting search behavior, you’ll need to keep your target audience’s attention.

        We hope we’ve given you ideas to rally up the troops. If you have any questions or feedback, drop us a line!  If you’re interested in learning more about the Seer’s competitive battle plans, reach us here.

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        How to Create a Successful LinkedIn Ad Campaign

        How to Create a Successful LinkedIn Ad Campaign

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        With 630 million professionals and 50 percent of Americans with a college degree on the platform, LinkedIn ads are a great opportunity to reach a network of educated professionals not available on other social media platforms. LinkedIn is also rated the top social network for lead generation, producing 80 percent of B2B leads generated on social media.

        Investing in any social media advertising is a great opportunity to generate new leads and increase conversions, but if you are targeting a professional audience, LinkedIn ad campaigns can be particularly effective at getting you visible results. Understanding the ins and outs of crafting LinkedIn ads is crucial, so continue reading to learn about LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities, ad types, ad price auctions and best practices for the platform.

        LinkedIn Ad Targeting

        Before you even begin to build a target audience on LinkedIn, ensure that the educated professionals you will find on the platform are your ideal target audience. If you have determined that the platform is the best fit for your advertising campaign, you can further narrow your target audience using LinkedIn’s three main targeting options.

        1. Professional Criteria Targeting

        hand draws around targeted audience for LinkedIn ads.

        There are multiple strategies for creating a target audience for your LinkedIn ads.

        This is likely the primary method that comes to mind when you think about creating target audiences for advertising. Using this method, you can target your ideal LinkedIn user based on member-generated demographic data such as their job title, company size, company name, industry, professional interests and more. Because members use LinkedIn in a professional capacity, they are motivated to keep their profiles accurate and up to date, so this data is particularly useful for targeting compared to other social media platforms.

        2. Matched Audiences

        Matched audiences allow you to target an audience you already know outside the platform through website, contact and account targeting.

        • Website targeting lets you target your LinkedIn ads based on visitors to your website. With this targeting option you can group your targeted audiences based on which pages of your website they visited. This allows you to customize the content of your ads to be most relevant to your audience and increases your likelihood of conversion.
        • Contact targeting is when you upload your email address lists or connect to your contact management platform so that you can target existing contacts and leads. This allows you to customize your LinkedIn ads to accomplish your goals with each target audience. For example, you could customize an ad to retain clients or convert prospective clients.
        • Account targeting, or an account-based marketing (ABM) campaign, allows you to upload a list of target companies and run ads targeting the decision-making individuals at those accounts.

        3. Lookalike Audiences

        To create a lookalike audience, LinkedIn will find individuals with the same traits as your preexisting audience(s). This is an incredibly effective way to generate new leads that are likely to result in conversions.

        LinkedIn Ad Types

        The hub for all of your LinkedIn advertising needs is the Campaign Manager. This is where you will create and manage your ad accounts and campaigns. While LinkedIn does have a LinkedIn Marketing Partners option, where you can work with a variety of different LinkedIn-approved businesses to design your marketing and advertising campaigns, we will focus on how to use self-service ads in your LinkedIn ad campaign through the Campaign Manager. There are four main LinkedIn advertising categories.

        1. LinkedIn Ads: Sponsored Content

        Sponsored content allows you to share your native content with a targeted audience. These ads will appear as “promoted” posts on users’ homepage feeds, intermixed with organic content. You can use an image, video or carousel format.

        Graphic depicting A/B testing for LinkedIn ads.

        Using A/B testing is a useful technique to determine the effectiveness of all types of LinkedIn ads.

        Make sure to use rich and clean media to attract users and stand out from other content while also keeping your descriptive text concise. Include a call to action (CTA) to encourage user engagement and increase conversions.

        Also, use A/B testing to experiment with the effectiveness of different variations of your LinkedIn ad. Sponsored content is especially effective when used with LinkedIn’s lead generation forms. This causes a pre-filled form with the user’s information to appear after they click on the ad, allowing the user to submit the form to your business with a single click and generating you a new lead.

        This ad option is particularly effective if you want to increase brand awareness, attract more followers, increase impressions and clicks, or direct users to a landing page.

        2. LinkedIn Ads: Text Ads

        These ads appear on the right-hand side of your users’ LinkedIn feeds with a linked headline and short description. Though it is optional, including an image drives better results. These ads are the simplest to create out of any of the ad options and, just like with other ad formats, we highly recommend using A/B testing to figure out which headlines, images and copy combinations are the most effective. Because you only get a single headline and one or two sentences to capture your audience’s attention, it is crucial that you are optimizing your ad for best results.

        This LinkedIn ad format is a great choice if you want to create a quick and easy ad that will drive traffic to your website and create potential leads.

        3. LinkedIn Ads: Sponsored InMail

        InMails deliver personalized content directly to your audience through their LinkedIn Messenger. Sponsored InMail is only delivered when LinkedIn users are active on the platform and is a great opportunity to build trust with your audience because users feel like you are talking to them on a personal level. These ads are incredibly effective at generating results, averaging a 10-25 percent response rate, 300 percent higher than emails. Similar to the sponsored content option, you can generate leads with sponsored InMail through LinkedIn’s lead generation forms.

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        This is a particularly effective LinkedIn ad option if you are trying to attract new leads, drive quality conversations for your product or service, send personalized invites to events or webinars, and promote content.

        4. LinkedIn Ads: Dynamic Ads

        Women logs in to LinkedIn.

        Dynamic ads are unique types of LinkedIn ads that are personalized to each member of the target audience.

        Dynamic ads are LinkedIn’s newest ad option and are particularly useful to advertisers. These ads pop up on the right side of a user’s newsfeed, similar to text ads. They are unique because they are automatically personalized for each viewer. All variations of these ads show an image of the viewer and your company’s logo along with a short message addressed to them.

        • Follower ads. This dynamic ad type allows you to get more followers for your page with a “follow” CTA accompanied by a short message telling your audience why they should keep up with your brand. This helps you increase brand awareness by expanding your audience and encouraging more engagement with the organic content on your page.
        • Spotlight ads. These LinkedIn ads highlight valuable content you want to share. This could include articles, products, services, events, newsletters and more. A customizable CTA lets you choose how you want to encourage engagement. For example, if you are advertising a conference, you could have a “register” button, or if you are advertising a professional service, you could use a “request demo” button. Spotlight ads are ideal for driving conversions.
        • Content ads. Content ads use a CTA to encourage your audience to download something, like a white paper or how-to guide, and then generate leads automatically for each user that does. You can use this leads list directly in Campaign Manager or send it to a marketing automation tool. This ad type is currently only available through a LinkedIn representative.

        Budgeting for LinkedIn Ads

        Man using calculator and papers to budget for LinkedIn ads.

        Unlike other social media advertising, Linked ads are priced based on an auction.

        LinkedIn uses a unique and slightly complicated system for pricing their ads. Unlike other social media advertising, LinkedIn ads are sold through an auction system where you compete against other advertisers targeting the same LinkedIn members. If your target audience is popular, the winning bids will be higher.

        When you are setting up your ad, you first input the amount you are willing to spend each day and the amount you are willing to spend total. If you want your campaign to deliver as fast as possible, you can skip the daily budget and only set a total budget.

        Finally, you input the amount you are willing to pay for each click, impression or send, which is what is used in the auction. Each time a user in your target audience logs in there is a new opportunity for your LinkedIn ad to pop up, and for you to win the auction. If you are not satisfied with the number of clicks, impressions or sends you are receiving, consider increasing your bid.

        The type of ad you use also determines what you are bidding on. You can control your spending for sponsored content and text ads through two payment options: pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-1,000-impressions (CPM). PPC charges you for each click on your ad link, which is useful if you want to drive traffic to your website. CPM charges you for every 1,000 people that see your ad, which is useful if you are aiming to drive brand awareness. For Sponsored InMail ads you are charged cost-per-send (CPS) whenever your ad is successfully delivered to a user.

        A final important piece of information about LinkedIn ad pricing is that LinkedIn also gives your ads an “ad relevance score” based on click-through-rate (CTR), likes, shares and other forms of engagement. According to LinkedIn, 0.35 percent is a good CTR for sponsored content and 0.05 percent is a good CTR for text ads. Ads with high relevance scores are rewarded with lower prices and generate higher conversions.

        It’s also worth noting that, of all the social media platforms, LinkedIn ads are the most expensive. If you decide this is the most effective platform for you to run your social media ads, plan on spending a minimum of $50 per day, although we often recommend $100+ per day if there’s room in the budget.

        LinkedIn Ad Best Practices

        Magnifying glass over LinkedIn logo.

        Following best practices is crucial to the success of all LinkedIn ads.

        Use a professional voice. Given that LinkedIn is the most professional of all social media platforms, it should not come as a shock that using a professional voice is crucial to running a successful LinkedIn ad campaign. Make sure to use clean ad designs and write with an educated vocabulary, but keep your content engaging and easy-to-digest.

        Personalize your advertising. People are more likely to engage with personalized ads. This is the reason that dynamic ads are particularly effective at maintaining high click-through-rates. All ads you publish should be personalized to your specific audience as much as possible.

        Test your ads. Use A/B testing with variations in headlines, copy and images in all of your ad campaigns. The highest conversions tend to come from campaigns running multiple ads because it allows you to determine which versions are most effective.

        Change your ads frequently. New LinkedIn ads receive more impressions than old ones, so change your ads at least once a month. This strategy, in combination with testing your ads, will allow you to maintain a high click-through rate, boosting your ad relevance score and increasing conversions.

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        Facebook campaign budget optimization: How marketers must prepare for September 1, 2019

        Facebook campaign budget optimization: How marketers must prepare for September 1, 2019

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        Facebook campaign budget optimization how marketers must prepare for September 1, 2src19

        If you are using Facebook’s Ads Manager, campaign budget optimization (CBO) will become mandatory for all ad campaigns as of September 1, 2019. 

        If you are using an API tool like AdRules, you have until September 2020 before it is mandatory.

        If you do any advertising on Facebook, you will be affected by this change. It will apply to both new and existing ad campaigns.

        If you don’t want a rude awakening on September 1 when CBO activates in Ads Manager and your Facebook campaigns start to behave very differently, you need to start testing campaign budget optimization now.

        Example of campaign budget optimization for Facebook AdsManager

        While nobody likes mandatory, sudden changes, this is not all doom and gloom. There are some considerable upsides to CBO. You will have to give up some control over your campaigns after September first, but with CBO:

        1. You’ll have less to manage

        If you spend hours adjusting bids every week, or if you pay someone else to adjust bids every week, much of that bid optimization work will be over.

        When campaign budget optimization is activated in Ads Manager, Facebook automatically shifts the ad budget to whichever ad set in a campaign is most effective. You get to control the definition of what “effective” means by specifying a goal for each campaign. Goals that are fairly late in your sales funnel, like a purchase or a download, tend to work best with CBO.

        Because all that bid management work will be done by the Facebook algorithm, you may be able to hire less expensive people to manage your campaigns or have your team members work on more networks or accounts. Or, if you’ve been doing those bid edits yourself, you may find you suddenly have extra hours free every week. We recommend using those free hours to develop better creative, to study your competitors’ creative, or to set up a more efficient creative testing machine.

        2. You’ll get a better return on ad spend (ROAS)

        While there were some early reports of CBO not working as well as human-managed campaigns, the algorithm has gotten considerably smarter than when it first launched.

        We’ve found that if a campaign is set up properly and the bids are high enough, CBO generally can get better results than a human can get.

        CBO will also reduce how often your campaigns are put into “learning mode”. That means you won’t get penalized when Facebook’s algorithm reassesses your campaigns.

        But you do need to give campaign budget optimization time to work. The algorithm needs about 50 conversions per ad set, per week, before it accrues enough data to ramp up your campaigns. And speaking of ramping up campaigns if you want to scale your campaigns, CBO is extremely effective. Especially if you keep feeding it new, high-quality audiences.

        3. You will still be able to control spending (to an extent) with ad set spending limits

        If you set a minimum spend for an ad set, Facebook will dutifully spend at least that amount. And if you set a maximum ad set spending limit, Facebook will not go over that limit.

        This is a way to set a “governor” of sorts on your spending. It will force Facebook to run ad sets perhaps longer than it might otherwise have, but if you’re not quite ready to relinquish control, ad set spending limits are a way to ease into this new campaign management approach.

        Those of you who also advertise with Google’s App Campaigns may have an edge already. Facebook is in some ways following Google’s lead by requiring advertisers to shift over to automated budget optimization.

        You could, potentially, get around CBO by creating dozens or even hundreds of campaigns, each with on single ad set. But that would be working against the algorithm. And besides, CBO works well. There aren’t many good reasons to try to circumvent it. Especially when you use it along with other Facebook best practices and Facebook’s simplified campaign structure recommendation.

        Start testing campaign budget optimization now

        The benefits of CBO are proven, but you need to start testing now to see how to make it work well for your accounts. We still have a couple of months until the change in Ads Manager, but you may need to run multiple week-long tests to get the hang of this new budgeting strategy.

        You may also need to shift how you’ve been defining goals. Using CBO for clicks is a waste of potential. Instead, look towards the end of the buyers’ journey. We like to optimize not just for app installs, but for specific app events like purchases. And not for just two-dollar purchases, we target people who are likely to spend $20 or more.

        As you begin to test and measure CBO, don’t get too attached to the results of individual ad sets. Look at the campaign level, as this graphic illustrates:

        Comparative study of having vs not having campaign budget optimization

        Also, get ready to bump up your creatives. For CBO to work, it often needs several creative assets for each ad set. Including a few videos and elements for dynamic creatives helps too.

        Pay close attention to your audiences, too. Many advertisers have found that CBO works best for them if they create separate campaigns for different audiences like one campaign for cold audiences and another campaign for a “warm” audience, like a retargeting audience.

        Get ready for things like “The Breakdown Effect” to make your reporting look a little strange at first. “The Breakdown Effect” occurs when discount pacing (how frequently your ads show) intersects with discount bidding and makes it look like the system is overcharging you for conversions. What’s actually happening is the system is trying to find the most affordable conversions first, then it tries to find more expensive conversions.

        Graph showing

        If you do a lot of testing, this breakdown effect pattern may be familiar. It’s similar to how one cell of a test can look like a winner at first but as the data accrue, that early winner falls away and another cell is shown to perform better in the long-term.

        Closing thoughts

        Facebook is evolving. Everyone knows this, but the CBO change in September for Ads Manager is yet one more example of it happening again. And because Facebook’s advertising platform is evolving, advertisers have to evolve with it, too. If you’re still doing Facebook advertising like you were a year ago, you’re losing money and missing out on better ROAS.

        Brian Bowman is the CEO of ConsumerAcquisition.com.

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