You’ve probably seen them. Those digital ads that seem to stalk you. As a digital marketing agency, our clients frequently ask us about those creepy ads that follow you around. However, these ads actually work! Customers who see retargeted ads are 70% more likely to convert on your website. Retargeted ads can also increase branded search exposure by 1,000% or more.
You’re not a known brand yet but heck, you’re excitement at launching your product online is palpable. Entering the eCommerce world is easier than it’s ever been, so taking the online sales plunge is fairly straightforward when you use a platform like WordPress, Squarespace or Wix. Perhaps the scariest part is that you’ve invested so much time and energy – and a lot of money – in getting set with inventory that is either going to delight your target market or gather dust.
Digital marketing agencies generally know that Amazon is a behemoth and has become the go-to search place for product searches and, obviously, sales. In fact, last quarter Amazon reported having 310 million active customers. It’s a no-brainer for brands that have built up years of brand equity in, for example, electronics, because of the decline in brick & mortar channels.
Here’s the caveat if you’re launching your brand: If you sell on Amazon, it can exponentially help your chances for sales revenue but you’re not really building your own business.
A lot of businesses these days recognize that getting online reviews is an important thing to do, but aren’t really sure why. The most popular response is usually, “my competitors are getting reviews, so we probably should too.” However, there are really 3 main reasons beyond this as to why online reviews are so important for your business.
We find digital marketing agencies design banners in a vacuum and as if they were magazine ads, failing to recognize that these banners are an interruptive form of advertising trying to divert your attention from the very website they are on. Don’t forget, people don’t visit websites to look at ads, they’re there for the content. Whether people are reading an article about the latest album release, or catching up on their favourite teams, they are not necessarily looking to make a purchase. Display banner advertising is interruptive in nature, making it especially important to stand out from everything else. In fact, only 14% of users can recall the last display ad they saw and the content it promoted.
As a digital marketing agency, we like to view digital banner ads like billboards; in fact, we often refer to them as billboards on the information highway. Imagine you’re driving in your car, look up, and see a billboard. That billboard has seconds to catch your eye before you drive away. It needs to make sense at first glance while giving you all the information you need to peak your interest. This is how to think of a banner ad.
We have a few handy tips to help you create the best banner ad that will get clicks:
This post provides a very cool example of small ways to build big brands.
What do you guess the following packaging contains?
Some jewelry?
A decorative item for your house?
Would you be surprised to know it’s a chain ring for a bike?
Blogging sounds easy. Pick a topic you’re passionate about, do your research and write something inspiring. But how do you make sure your blog gets found? The key is to make sure you’re using words or phrases that people are actually searching for.
Recently, we had a high-end Toronto custom home building company who was looking to gain quality business leads while avoiding the spam of small renovation projects. Due to the majority of keyword searches in their category being for smaller projects, it was determined that a social media strategy was the best option. Although they were already present on social media and were frequently posting, they were not getting any leads. They came to us in hopes of a total social revamp.
Social media platforms are constantly changing and updating their algorithms; Facebook is no exception. Recently Facebook has been favouring native video and ‘meaningful interactions’ between users. This means that businesses posting about products and services are not a priority. Unfortunately, as seen below, this also means that growing an organic audience on Facebook is becoming more difficult. So how do you, as a business, reach your audience? Ads. You need to pay-to-play.
The most obvious way to tell if there’s an issue is to check if your campaign is providing leads at an affordable ROI. Outside of this, there are two easy methods to tell if you are accidentally wasting your money on purchasing irrelevant keyword phrases.
The click-through rate is a measure of how frequently an ad is clicked when it’s seen (clicks/impressions). In addition to reducing the cost-per-click over time, your click-through-rate is an important measurement for the relevance of targeting. If your ads are accidentally being served up for irrelevant phrases, they are less likely to be clicked, which would reduce the CTR. For reference, the industry average Google Search CTR is now in the 1-2% range, although we generally see campaigns in the 2-5% range.
Did you know that the Search Terms list is actually different than the keyword list? Depending on the match type that’s used, it’s possible for these lists to be completely different. For example, if I decide to purchase the keyword “storage”, I may accidentally purchase anything from “data storage”, “storage units” “bedroom storage”, and “cloud storage”.
Here at the Marketing Garage, we are believers that the secret to effective internet marketing is to always be learning, testing, and tuning. It’s important to build off of your success and to keep the best while fixing the rest.
Recently, we had a Toronto B2B client in the professional services industry that was looking into rebuilding their website. Although the site performance was positive, the overall look was beginning to feel dated and our client was ready to upgrade in hopes of driving more leads.
Site rebuilds can be risky. If not done properly, they can lead to a drop in Google rankings, losing all of your hard work. Instead of seeing a drop in the rankings, we were able to actually increase search traffic by 28% as well as increase the conversion rate by 50% and increase enquiries by 3x!
See how we did it here:
Read The Case Study
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