Email Marketing

Sometimes it’s hard to keep up.

Consumer habits have changed in many ways over the past few years, forcing effective digital marketing strategies to change with them. Consumers are increasingly mobile. They’re on the Internet most of the day, but usually in tiny bursts and most often, it’s on their phones. To keep up, digital marketers have to constantly test and modify strategy and tactics.

Despite all the changes, one thing has stayed the same: email still is a critical and effective way to reach people.

One of the first uses of the Internet, email has remained popular both among consumer and B2B marketers. Here are a few reasons why:

Start your day by checking in: In an age of social media, people still regularly check their emails, often several accounts, several times a day. About 91% of consumers check their email every day. For many of us, it’s the first thing we do when we wake up and the last thing we check before going to bed.

It’s always around: We carry our smart phones — and our email — around with us all day. Most of us can’t help but check on our emails on and off throughout the day. That gives brands and marketers ample opportunity to get people’s attention. About 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices, and about 23% of people who open an email on their phones will open that same email again later, according to Campaign Monitor. About 75% of Gmail’s 900 million users check their accounts on mobile devices, according to TechCrunch. So even if consumers and clients aren’t biting at your offer or aren’t converting, they are reading – and that itself can be considered effective.

Email plays nice with social media: You don’t have to choose between email marketing and a social media campaign. Your email message can link to social media, optimizing both efforts. Email subscribers are three times more likely to share your content through social media than visitors from other sources, according to QuickSprout. People are 6x more likely to click on an email than a tweet, according to Campaign Monitor. But what if your email directed viewers to your tweet? Voila! Now you have two ways to get your message out.

Email can be a powerful and effective way to reach consumers. A few steps can help you make the most of your email strategy.

Give ’em the hook: You only have a few seconds to catch your readers’ attention. The subject line is key, whether it is a question, a teaser or something interesting, entertaining or compelling.

A personal touch: Personalized emails can boost customer engagement and click-through rates. Aberdeen found that click-through rates jumped 14% and conversions improved by 10% with email personalization. Also, emails sent by a person or persona outperform those sent by a generic address like accounts or info @yourcompany.com.

What’s in it for me?: Consumers are much more likely to click and read emails if they can get something out of it. That includes coupons and special offers, but it also can included tips and inside information — as long as the reader sees it as valuable.

Test and retest: An effective digital marketing team or agency will constantly evaluate all aspects of your email marketing effort. This includes the subject line, day and time it was sent, pre-header, images, message content, length of content and calls to action or other links. All of these attributes can contribute to email performance, or lack thereof. Test this and the geographic, demographics and other criteria of who you are targeting. Optimize based on performance and your effort will continue to improve over time.

If you would like to learn more about high performing email marketing tactics specific to your market, feel free to drop us a line at 203-682-4585, shoot us an email at info@adedgemarketing.com or Contact Us and let us know what’s on your mind.

Banner Advertising Tactics

Stop! Wait a second. OK. Now continue.

That’s about how much time you have to catch viewers as they browse past your digital banner advertisement on their way to reading the news, looking at fashions, researching ideas for the weekend, or reading a blog about cars.

Banner ads are an essential and early part of a digital marketing campaign in that they build awareness of your brand or your product and service ahead of your harder-hitting direct response, inbound marketing effort. But what good is a banner if it doesn’t capture your viewer’s attention. Yeah, that viewer who’s ever-distracted, multi-tasked and media-bombarded. The good news is, it can be done!

Think of banner ads as the Internet’s version of a roadside billboard or a magazine ad. They’re in front of a large number of clients and consumers every day, but only for a few seconds at a time. The ones that are most effective tend to have a few things in common:

Catchy design: Strong images and effective use of color can help land a look from consumers. But don’t go overboard. Avoid clutter. This isn’t 1997.

Concise text: Say what you need to say but keep the copy short so there’s plenty of white space remaining for your copy and images to stand out.

Strong copy: Use action words to encourage people to move quickly. A good call to action includes urgency, scarcity or opportunity. It can ask a question or tease with a peek into a solution.

Focus on mobile: Consumers increasingly are accessing the internet — and your banner ads — on their phones and tablets. Your ad should be designed to catch them where they are. The ads should be formatted to work on any size screen or device.

Targeting: Unlike a highway billboard magazine ad, TV, radio or other mass media, banner advertising platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Bing give you the ability to choose exactly who sees your message. You can target by demographics (age, gender, income, etc.), geographic (state, city/zip or within one mile of an address), real estate zones (residential, retail, commercial and/or industrial), and using geofencing or geotargeting you can target under the rooftop of certain buildings and reach employees of certain businesses, patients and doctors at hospitals or students at certain schools.

Targeting banner advertising based on search history gives you the ability to reach individuals based on their search history. For long sales cycle services involving education, law, medicine or consulting, search-targeted banner advertising is an extremely effective way to reach prospects who you know are interested in your products or services and are very likely to be interested in what you have to say. If your digital marketing effort includes both banner ads and paid search, make sure to Google Analytics and your Search Terms report to help identify the best keywords to trigger your banner ads to show. The latest and most advanced form of banner advertising utilizes your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. By linking emails on a list (whether you own, rent or buy it) to a banner advertising effort, you can reach specific individuals with banner ads. This is extremely effective when done in advance of an inbound marketing effort, direct response marketing or sales effort. Long story short, targeting is the most effective way to reach the exact individuals likely to be interested in your products or services and with smart targeting, your cost per impression, click, lead and sale can be extremely cost effective.

Call to action: If your goal is direct response rather than building awareness with a branding effort, a good call to action will improve your CTR (click-through rate). Calls to action encourage viewers to do something, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a brochure, watching a video, or clicking to try or buy.

As the first company in Connecticut to earn advanced certifications from Google in Banner Advertising and Paid Search, we’ve done a ton of highly effective banner campaigns for our clients and we have lots of data (going back to 2007!) to help you run a successful banner campaign for your company. If you’d like to hear about the latest and greatest banner tactics, or get some ideas about how to use banners to build awareness, website traffic, leads and sales, we’re here for you. Feel free to reach us at (203) 682-4585 or schedule some time for a chat. Don’t miss an update! Sign up for our newsletter and get late-breaking tips, tactics and success stories delivered to your inbox once a month.

The changing landscape of digital marketing

In the world of Internet technology, change continues to happen at lightning pace and with it, consumer habits are changing just as quickly. Digital marketers must keep up or risk getting left behind by others who adapt more quickly. To keep the right messages in front of the right audiences via the right media, digital marketers need to not just to stay current, but to stay ahead of evolving consumer trends.

Everything mobile: Move quickly. According to Google, typical Americans check their phones 150 times a day. Each mobile session lasts only about 70 seconds, but that adds up to almost 3 hours in one day. To reach consumers, your message must be where they are and when they are there. Websites and advertisements designed for mobile must render well on a wide variety of screen sizes, and they must load quickly. Google refers to “I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy and I-want-to-do” moments – moments when consumers see something that sparks their interest and leads to a related quick internet search. With a strong digital marketing campaign, your message can reach those consumers when they get an impulse to know something, go somewhere, buy something or do something. This is also referred to as In The Moment Marketing. It’s about advertising to the right consumers in the right place at the right time, all the time.

Social media: Reputation is everything. The average person in North America spends more than four hours a day on social media. While the social media experience is divided among a large and growing number of platforms and apps, the division provides an opportunity for digital marketers. Social media advertising lets companies target narrowly defined audiences, both by choosing a platform popular to a specific demography and by narrowing ad buys to specific subsets of those users based on lifestyle, life stage, interests, hobbies, affiliations with groups, and many other selections that allow for micro targeting to highly productive groups of consumers. Deeply targeted campaigns can be a game-changer for social advertising performance.

Video: Roll the tapes! Consumers increasingly are turning to short videos instead of pages and pages of text. According to Zenithmedia Bluecorona, video is expected to make up 82 percent of all internet traffic in 2021. Already, video is winning more screen time than static content. From a digital marketer’s perspective, where there is video, there is video advertising. Think of video advertising as a TV commercial, only much better. Video ads are far more targetable, more affordable, more measurable and offer direct response capabilities which makes this platform far, far more productive than TV. Being a Google owned company, the targeting capabilities on YouTube are mind-blowing and if done right, YouTube ads can perform exceptionally well.

Content is king: The more things change, they more they stay the same. While consumer trends and digital marketing opportunities are changing rapidly, at least one thing has held constant. To catch and hold consumers’ attention, marketing messages still must have strong, clearly communicated, relevant content. The three benefits of good content are: 1) Illustrate your expertise and leadership in your industry, 1) keep your company and products or services top of mind among your customers and clients and 3) being an important SEO tactic, good, relevant content improves your natural rank in the search engines.

It can be hard to keep up with the rapidly changing trends and tactics in digital marketing. If you’d like a helping hand, we’re here for you. If you’d like to chat about a specific challenge you’re having or goal you’re trying to hit, feel free to reach us at (203) 682-4585. You can also schedule some time for a chat here, or visit www.adedgemarketing.com. We’d love to share both ideas and cold, hard data about the latest digital marketing tactics that perform best for your industry.

Finding the right fit: pros and cons of working with a large or small digital marketing agency

Looking for a digital marketing partner? Or any other business service provider, for that matter? If so, there are many important factors to consider in making your decision. For example, the services offered and price points are obviously important but there are many others to consider. For example, how well does the firm “fit-in” with your organization? This is based mainly on how well you expect your teams to work together.

One important factor that you many not have considered is size. Do you want to work wtih a large company or small? There are various pros and cons. Bigger companies may have more resources, more people and — in some cases — more experience… at least they pay this a lot of lip service. But smaller companies can also have advantages, especially for small to mid-sized organizations.

Response time. In many cases, smaller companies can respond and move more quickly. Do you have a question or suggestion about your marketing campaign? Do you want to make a small — or not so small — change to an existing program or start something new? At a small agency, you can call your account rep and make it happen! With fewer organizational layers, small agencies are more nimble and it takes them less time to start or update a campaign or a marketing effort. On the other hand, this could be a case where experience is helpful. You want a company than can move quickly, but you also want to work with people who know whether your suggestion is a good idea. If it is, they need to know how to make it happen and if it isn’t, you need to be able to rely on them for pushback.

Customization. You’re looking for digital marketing expertise, but in what area? Do you need search engine optimization or social media management? Or both? Make sure the company you’re working with can provide what you’re looking for. Larger companies may have more experience in a variety of services and options but they tend to package and manage services in more of a cookie-cutter, automated way. Smaller agencies tend to be able to design a marketing campaign custom-built for specific industries, clients and goals. They tend to address the specific needs of small to mid-size companies rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach.

Focus. You want to know your service provider is working for you. There are many ways that can play out. With a larger company, you might have several people working for you and often times, floating account reps who may not be familiar with your campaign, other than what they read in their CRM notes. With a smaller agency, you are likely to receive more personalized attention. Smaller companies tend to have fewer clients, so they can provide more personalized attention to you, and they tend to care more about the relationship.

Overhead. Bigger firms may have more resources, but sometimes that can get expensive and cumbersome. Smaller companies have fewer employees, fewer organizational layers, lower rent (or no rent) and therefore can operate with more cost-efficiency and speed.

Whether you work with a large agency, a smaller agency or something in between, it’s important to do your homework. Find an organization that works well with you and your needs. If you think AdEdge may be the right size firm to serve your digital marketing agency needs, give us a call. We’d love to set you up with a free consultation to see how we could work together. You can reach us at (203) 682-4585, schedule some time for a chat, or visit www.adedgemarketing.com.

 

Building a strong reputation is essential

Building a strong reputation is essential

Do you have a great product or a great service? That’s wonderful. But it’s not enough. Do your customers know your products and services are great? More and more, people only will buy — and sometimes even shop — from highly rated companies and organizations with good reputations. A recent survey of online shoppers showed that 78% of people say it is very important to look up a business online before deciding to interact or do business with them. A study by the Etail Group shows that 92% of users read internet reviews, and a Cone Inc. shows that 89% of users trust online reviews. So positive reviews and a good reputation are critical and they can have a significant impact on your Search Engine Marketing efforts (including Paid Search and SEO). How?

Put simply, when customers search for something online, they are looking for the best solution to their issue. Sounds obvious but let’s think about two key words here: “best” and “solution” and what they mean. Most prospects start by searching for a solution. That also happens to be where most marketers doing Search Engine Marketing focus all their attention. They ask, “What words will prospects search for when they are in need of the products or services we sell?” It’s a fair enough question but whether it’s spelled out in a search query or not, most consumers are performing a two-part search. Part one is the outward question that presents itself as a search query, “Who has what I need?” but the second question that often goes unstated but is equally important is, “Who’s got the best of what I need or who will best solve my problem?” This is where reputation in the form of reviews and ratings is critical… your reputation is usually sitting right there at the top of the screen or within one click. In most industries, people choose to work with the best. Is your online reputation better than your competition? Will prospective customers and clients choose you over other options they see on the Search Engine Results Page? If not, how do you build a reputation for your company that will have you shining above your competition and will make you the most attractive choice?

Reputation management essentially is managing how people perceive your brand or company. To improve this perception, you need to create strong content and monitor and interact with others regarding conversations about your products and services, and your brand. The following steps can help you to build and maintain a strong reputation:

1. Create positive content. A steady flow of positive pages and search results can help set you apart as an expert and can cover over or reduce the impact of any negative content. One way to achieve this is with a blog. Illustrate your expertise in your field – include interesting and insightful information so people will actually read it.

2. Be meaningful. Be valuable to your readers. Answer their questions (stated or unstated) and give them information that is helpful to them. If you can benefit your readers, they’re more likely to talk about your post and share it with their friends and followers, which will spread your words much farther.

3. Be honest. Honesty can help you build a reputation as an expert. If you get caught in a lie, the hit to your reputation could be severe.

4. Limit the self-promotion. People don’t want to listen to a constant sales pitch. If you provide useful information to your readers, you will promote your broader message and brand. But if you focus only on yourself, you’ll turn away your audience. Keep in mind what’s in it for them. How do people benefit from visiting your site?

5. Be social. While a strong blog can set you as an expert, it’s not helpful if no one sees it. Being active on social media can help build followers and direct traffic to your site. Different social media channels and platforms have different audiences. Know where your audience is and how to interact with them.

6. Respond quickly and often. Social media is supposed to be social. Draw out your readers with questions and challenges. Encourage them to interact, and respond when they do.

7. Give back. When people interact with your blog and social media, post to theirs.

8. Get good pub. Gain publicity by writing articles for other blogs, buying web advertising and looking for other ways to ethically promote your brand or company as much as possible.

9. Respond properly to negative reviews. If you catch and address negative reviews quickly, you are much more likely to convince the reviewer to provide a better review. If the reviewer is unwilling to change the review, you may be able to post information that addresses, corrects or provides additional information about the negative post. But don’t get into a fight with people looking to cause trouble. And don’t make personal attacks.

10. Encourage reviews. Since you’re looking to improve your reputation, make sure to ask only happy customers to rate you and leave you a review. Don’t ask all customers to post reviews and don’t make the mistake of publishing links to your Google page or Yelp for this purpose. Doing so invites reviews from both happy and unhappy customers, and possibly even competitors. A good online reputation builder service will do all the hard work for you, communicating directly with customers and separating the happy from the not so happy. Happy customers are encouraged to leave reviews and unhappy customers get a feedback form that goes to their account manager or service department. A good reputation builder program can improve your online reputation quickly.

If you want to generate business from your Search Engine Marketing effort (whether paid or organic), make sure to 1) Show up in the Search Engine Results Page when prospects search for the products or services you sell and 2) have a great reputation in the form of positive reviews and ratings that illustrate you clearly as the best choice. If you have any questions about your online reputation or need some words of advice, feel free to give us a call at 203-836-8390 or shoot us a note.  All AdEdge clients get our Reputation Builder service free of charge for six months. If you’re not a client, feel free to schedule a 15-minute demo of our affordable and highly effective AdEdge Reputation Builder service. And do sign up for our newsletter to get monthly digital marketing tips delivered straight to your inbox.

Paid search made better: Dos and don’ts to help you get the most out of your paid search campaign

A paid search campaign is a quick and powerful way to reach your customers and potential customers. With Google Ads and similar programs on other platforms, you can connect your brand and your message with what your customers and potential customers already are searching for and looking at.

Hop on board. Go with them. Consumers today want to partner with brands that care about what they care about and can help them complete what they’re working on and are interested in.

Sounds good, right? It can be. The following tips can help you get the most out of you paid search efforts.

• Do plan first. Before you jump into a paid search campaign, define your goals. Know what you want to accomplish, and research the best ways to reach those goals.
• Don’t use generic keywords in a one-size-fits-all approach. Be specific. Be targeted. Use strong keywords that can steer customers to your specific message and your specific goals.
• Do use the data. One of the great advantages of digital marketing is the vast amount of data it produces. If you’ve used paid search before, start with what already has worked. If not, you likely still have data about how viewers most often find your sites. Build on that information.
• Don’t stop using the data. The internet isn’t static, and neither are your customers. Use A/B testing on your keywords, your headlines, your landing pages and other data points to see what works and what doesn’t. And just because something works today doesn’t mean it will work tomorrow. Keep testing and checking to see if something else could work better.
• Do use negative keywords. It’s not enough to direct your message and pages to words or phrases. Many words have multiple meanings. Use negative keywords to weed out the meanings you’re not interested in.
• Don’t be misleading. It’s never a good idea to be misleading, but with paid search, it can be costly. Attracting more people is not helpful if most are not interested in your message. Instead, be specific and clear, directing your message to the consumers most likely to be interested in what you’re offering.
• Do keep it local. Use geotargeting to direct your efforts to customers in your area.
• Don’t waste your clicks. Make sure your clicks are directed to the proper landing page and that they’re not sent to the wrong page or to your homepage.
• Do maximize your paid search results. Use text from your paid search ads in social media and blog posts to extend the reach of your efforts.

Raise the banner

If you’re looking to gain awareness of your brand or direct potential customers to your website, banner advertising might be what you’re looking for. Banner ads can be designed in various sizes, shapes, and styles and can be designed based on your industry and goals. The versatile banner ad is a utility player, able to handle most situations.
Also known as display advertising, banner ads typically feature a combination of an image and text. They can be static images such as a .jpg or .png file, or they can feature multimedia, such as animated gifs, flash or HTML5 animation. Perhaps overused at the birth of the internet with flashing, eye-numbing animations, effective banner ads today typically are much more subtle, designed to catch viewers’ attention while not distracting them from the advertisement’s message or goal. Finding that balance is sometimes harder than it sounds. How do you do catch a viewer’s attention without being overly distracting or obnoxious? Some banner ads include subtle animation, catching the viewers’ attention and directing them to the text on the ad. Perhaps only a small portion of the ad will be animated. Another strategy is to use color for the same objective. For example, a banner might be black and white, with one accent color designed to direct the reader to the advertisement.
Back in the day, banner ads were targeted by simply choosing websites on which to place the ads. Placement-based banner advertising still works in certain limited cases, depending on the industry. But much more advanced and higher-performing forms of banner ad placement and targeting have evolved. Now, banner ads can be targeted based on search history, website visit history, look-alike audiences, and even by matching to a customer or lead list, called CRM-targeted banner advertising. With demographic targeting, banners can reach prospects by age, gender or income. Geographic targeting can be done by country, state, city, distance from a point, IP targeting and even rooftop targeting for certain industries. Also called geofencing, rooftop targeting works well for certain industries that target specific locations, such as colleges that are targeting “feeder schools”.
Banner ads provide two benefits. Like print ads or billboards, they can promote a brand (company or product), a message or an idea. Viewers see the brand and eventually become comfortable with it. They take in the message and even if they do not interact further with the banner ad, it’s mission is accomplished. But because banner ads also are clickable and interactive, they are a form of digital direct response advertising. This is the second benefit. Clicks on banners direct interested prospects to a landing page that (if designed properly), will engage the visitor and in some cases, convert them to a lead or customer. These forms of engagement and lead generation can include a newsletter signup, download, live or animated chat, the Contact Us page or sales page. We’ll talk more about landing page design in the near future.
Like other online advertisements, banner ad performance is easily measurable. At a very basic level, advertisers can see how many prospects viewed and clicked on each ad and can compare performance between ads and websites that are delivering the best click-through rates. With Google Analytics in place, performance measurement is taken to a different level by crossing over to the website. With analytics, advertisers can tell which clicks are delivering the best value in terms of the amount of time clicks spend on the landing page, how many pages are viewed and whether or not clicks are converting to leads or sales.
Here at AdEdge, we run regular AB and multivariate tests on banner ads for our clients where we are constantly testing for the best performing images, copy, calls to action and depending on the business, offers and premiums. By running banner ads in a “test and control” environment, we are able to prove theories about what is driving ad performance within any given industry. Our unique research also gives us insights about ad format performance. For example, square banners perform better than leader boards and towers on most websites and for most industries. And static ads generally perform better than animated ads, again depending on the campaign goals, industry and demographics we are targeting.
Banner ads can be designed in various sizes and shapes and placed in various places on a website. Regardless of the dimensions or specific design, effective banner ads should include your company logo, name, product or service being offered, a unique selling proposition or value proposition and if the ad is to be dual purpose (branding and direct response), a call to action such as watch now, learn more or get started. The text should be easily readable and have a fair amount of white space to keep it uncluttered and “easy on the eyes”. Google Ads requires banner ad file sizes to be under 150k and in .gif, .png or .jpg formats.
Banner ads are a great way to build your company’s brand and attract visits to your website from good, prospective customers. Is your company using banner advertising to its best potential? If not or if you’re not sure, give us a call at (203) 682-4585 or contact us for a free evaluation and some great ideas. If you enjoyed this blog, sign up for our newsletter and get best practices and new tactics in digital marketing delivered straight to your inbox once a month.

Getting the most out of your website

It’s not enough to just have a website. Websites in 2019 must be optimized and active to help companies attract and retain customers. A strong marketing strategy starts with setting up your website to reach the most potential customers and tailoring the message and presentation to attract attention from people most likely to be interested in and benefit from your services.

Just as it’s easy to start a company but hard to grow a company, it’s easy to build a website but hard to ensure that site is as effective as possible at reaching the people who need you most. So what is a company to do? One critical step is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

Search Engine Optimization refers to all the ways you can make your website attractive to Google and other search engines, which ensures people can see your website and its pages on search engine results pages, or SERPs.

Search engine traffic is essential. A 2014 study by Conductor looked at data from 30 websites in six industries. The study found that 64 percent of traffic was from unpaid search engine results. Only 12 percent was from viewers directly typing in the web address.

While search engines are critical, it’s not enough just be listed. A study from Advanced Web Rankings shows that it’s not enough even to be on the first page of a search result. In the study, the top five results hoarded almost 68 percent of clicks. Results six through 10 collected only 3.7 percent.

So how do you catch the attention of search engines? First, you must stay current. Search engines regularly update their algorithms, changing how they organize rankings by adjusting what they look for or prioritizing different techniques. SEO plans must be updated accordingly. You’re not going to get the results you want in 2019 if you’re still following the 2017 playbook.

Still, some steps are essential regardless of the algorithms. To make sure search engines register all your site and your company have to offer, be sure to use proper metadata titles, keywords and descriptions for your site. Images also must be tagged propertly. Pictures often are helpful to the viewer, but search engines need alternative text to “see” the image.

Another universal is the need for quality, helpful content. The old sayings “garbage in, garbage out,” and “putting lipstick on a pig” have become cliche because their truths are so universal. SEO can get you traffic, but all the traffic in the world doesn’t matter if no one wants to read your content.

The internet is an ever-changing space. To remain effective, marketers must keep up with changing consumer trends. One of the most profound changes in recent years is the proliferation of smartphones. Consumers increasingly are searching the internet and doing business on their phones. The trend has significant consequences for companies and marketers. Internet marketing was build around computer screens, which tend to be fairly large, horizontal and relatively uniform in dimension. Mobile devices, however, are much smaller and more diverse.

To address this trend, companies must design their websites to be universally compatible, optimized for both mobile and desktop formats. But the growing preference appears to be for mobile over traditional computers. Google in March acknowledged for the first time it is using mobile-first indexing, meaning the search engine only indexes pages’ mobile versions. So updating a desktop page without paying attention to the mobile version could leave you off the rankings.

Because viewers increasingly are relying on their phones and other mobile devices, it is even more important that pages are optimized for smaller, vertical screens. Fewer elements can fit on a smaller phone screen, so designers must choose wisely what is included and how it is presented.
Those decisions are critical not just for presentation, but also for page loading. Depending on the connection speed, pages often load more slowly on mobile devices than traditional computers. Large pictures also are less necessary and can be cumbersome. According to a 2017 study by Google, most mobile sites are painfully slow because they are crammed full of too many elements. The study looked at 11 million mobile advertisement landing pages. For 70 percent of the pages, it took more than five seconds for the primary visual image to load and more than seven seconds to load all visual content at the top of the page.

Viewers apparently aren’t that patient. The Google study showed that viewers were 32% more likely to leave the page if it took three second to load as opposed to one second. Viewers were 90% more likely to leave if the page took five seconds to load, and they were 123% more likely to leave if loading took 10 seconds. Pictures and graphics can catch viewers’ attention and lead them to other information on the page, but if those images take too long to load, they can do more harm than good.

If you are unsure of how your website or SEO effort is performing, feel free to give us a call at (203) 682-4585 or contact us for a free evaluation and recommendations.

How Keywords Can Make or Break your Paid Search and SEO Efforts

Building a Paid Search campaign with Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is easy. Select a few keywords, write an ad, set a budget and whamo, you’re in business, right? It depends. If you want to be in the business of paying Google then yes, you’re in business but if you’re looking to build leads and sales, not so fast. Google makes it very easy for you to build a campaign – and the easiest of all is Google Express. But don’t expect it to perform. Why? The primary reason is poor keyword selection. “Come on, a keyword is a keyword, right?” Wrong. There is far more to keyword research and selection than you might think, especially in a competitive environment.
Identifying keywords to use for a Paid Search campaign starts by thinking about terms your customers will search from their perspective, not yours. Let’s say you sell corporate accounting services. Your top keywords should be corporate accounting services, corporate accounting, accounting for companies and so on, right? Maybe, maybe not. You need to think about this from the customer’s perspective. What are they going to search for? Possibly corporate accounting but consider the myriad other options such as, accounting firms, accounting companies, business accountants, best business accounting firm in Hartford, among others. After doing the research, you’ll often find hundreds of potentially winning combinations of terms used to find a single type of business. A strong effort starts with a core set of terms, adds similar terms and then adds adjectives to modify the base terms. Terms with three or more words are considered “Long Tail Keywords”. Coming up with a good and relevant set of long tail keywords has three benefits: 1) Your competition is less likely to have thought of them making the terms far less costly, 2) long tail keywords are specific and when paired with equally specific ads and landing page within a tightly-themed AdGroup, will perform better for the simple reason that you are presenting an ad and a landing page that answers a specific need or solves a specific problem. 3) Starting with a robust set of keywords gives you more data about which keywords are performing well and which are performing poorly. This allows you to more easily optimize the keywords by adjusting maximum bids at the keyword level based on performance. The two other things to consider when building keywords is Match Type and Negative Terms. Match Type sets the rules under which keywords will trigger your ads to show. Broad Match keywords gives Google carte blanche to modify the term with what they think is a match. Using the example above, Google may substitute jobs for companies which means when someone searches for “accounting jobs” your keyword for “accounting companies” will trigger an ad to show. Google’s logic is that some people searching for accounting companies are actually searching for accounting jobs …but what good does that do you? Long story short, don’t use Broad Match keywords. The opposite problem happens with Exact Match keywords where the exact term needs to be searched with nothing before, after or in-between. The problem with Exact Match is it leaves out plenty of good terms like, “best accounting companies”. Since this does not match exactly with “accounting companies”, your ad will not show. The happy medium is Broad Match Modifier and Phrase Match terms which allow additional terms before, after and in some cases, in the middle of the keyword but will not allow keyword replacements. If you are running either of these match types, Negative Keywords are very important. For example, if you are not a tax accountant, you may want to run a negative term for tax so that when someone searches for “tax accounting companies”, your ad doesn’t show. Other common negatives are free, cheap, jobs, sucks and other non-performing terms. Here at AdEdge we’ve amasses a list of hundreds of negatives terms by reviewing performance of hundreds of clients over our 12 years at this. By limiting irrelevant searches, a robust list of negative terms improves performance a great deal.
The process for selecting keywords for SEO is similar, but not the same. Before embarking on an SEO campaign, we often advise our clients to run a paid search campaign first so that we can see how suspected keywords are performing in their market, in the real world. We look at three things: 1) Search volume, 2) click volume and most importantly, 3) post-click performance. Post click performance is an evaluation of what website visitors did on your website after clicking your ad. How long did they stay on the site, how many pages did they view, which pages did they view, did they engage with the site and did they convert to a lead or sale? By aggregating performance of each keyword over time, we can identify a definitive list of keywords to push for your SEO. But we’re not done just yet. Before committing to these top keywords, we run them through a competitive analysis to see who else is ranking for those terms and how powerful their SEO is. Why? Because we don’t want to fight any big battles that we can’t win. Here’s a super short case study to prove the point. A real estate broker in Manhattan came to us in frustration with their SEO effort that was managed by a previous agency. They paid big money to rank for “NY Real Estate Broker” and other popular, relevant terms that describe their services. Sounds reasonable, right? Unfortunately, their agency failed to complete a competitive analysis that would have shown that page one of Google was crowded with some very big players like Realtor.com, Yelp and Zillow. These companies have very hard-hitting SEO that can be displaced only with a very substantial effort and six-figure+ budget. Instead, we researched our client’s top performing keywords, netted out against highly competitive terms and got them to rank on page one for several excellent keyword terms. The SEO work we did had a significant impact on their rank, website traffic and ultimately, leads.
Here at AdEdge Digital Marketing, we’re all about campaign optimization and performance. If you’re not sure how well your Paid Search or SEO effort is performing (whether it’s being managed internally or through an agency), feel free to contact us for a complimentary evaluation. Contact Anthony at 203-682-4585 or email anthony@adedgemarketing.com.

The importance of Website Design in Engaging with and Converting Customers

With any new digital marketing effort, your website is one of the first things you should evaluate. Presuming that your digital marketing is going to do its job of sending good, prospective customers to your website, it’s your website’s job to engage with them and convert them into customers. Is your website up to the task? Here are a few things to consider when evaluating your website and its ability to convert visitors into customers.
Let’s start with the basics. Make sure your website is correctly branded with your name and/or logo prominently displayed on top. Does your website “look and feel” like your company? If you have a dedicated marketing resource, have them share your company’s Style Guide with your website developer. A style guide specifies colors, fonts, design elements, guidelines on the use of images and the tone of your copy. Even if you don’t have a style guide, using the company’s familiar colors and fonts maintains your company’s brand consistency and personality. Consistent brand helps to create a better connection between all of the marketing you do. It makes more impact and helps website visitors recognize that they have arrived at the right place.
Once you’ve got an attractive, correctly branded website in place it’s time to think about your visitors and their experience on your website. If you are running a digital marketing campaign, visitors are likely coming to you in search of answers to their questions or solutions to their problem or opportunities. Does your website answer these needs quickly and simply? Does your website explain how your products and services satisfy their needs? One of the best ways to address customers’ specific needs is to create landing pages that relate specifically to the products or services they are looking for. For example, if you sell excavating equipment don’t send all prospects to the same home page or products page. Instead, send those who are looking for a bulldozer to your bulldozer page and those looking who are looking for backhoes to your backhoe page. The two rewards of highly relevant, tightly-themed marketing groups are 1) those searching for a particular product or service will find exactly what they are looking for and are more likely to purchase and 2) Google Ads rewards relevance between the keyword search, the ad and the landing page with a higher quality score. A high-quality score is one of the factors that impacts a higher ad position and lower cost. Having explained what you sell, your next job is to explain how your product, service, or company is different and better than alternate choices. This is known as your unique selling proposition. Put simply, your website should answer the question as to why a customer should buy from you vs. someone else. Give your prospect a reason to choose your solutions over similar solutions offered by competing companies. A SWOT analysis can also help you to figure out where you are positioned in the marketplace against competing firms. Simply list your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This will further help you to identify solutions or benefits that are unique to your company.
By the time a website visitor has spent at least 15 seconds on your website, they should “get” your brand, know your name, what you sell, and why your solutions are unique or better than what your competitors offer. With that done, your next goal is to engage with visitors and “reel them in”. Engagement tools encourage visitors to interact with you and/or your website. Establishing a relationship with visitors builds trust and gives them a vested interest in continuing the conversation. Engagement tools also provide “jump off points” for prospects to interact with company representatives, bots or apps and these interactions convert prospect to leads. On the landing page or home page itself, make sure your phone number is prominently displayed at the top and frequently within the content. [Contact Us] buttons should be placed strategically as well so that when a prospect decides to take next steps, there is always a button or phone number within easy reach. Live chat is a great way to engage with website visitors, answer their questions and explain the advantages of your products or services. Remember, your visitor arrived at your website solve a problem, answer a question or explore an opportunity. And if you answer those needs via chat or other means, they will have very little reason to leave. You may also consider an automatic appointment scheduling app. These apps integrate with your existing calendar and allow visitors to schedule time with you (by phone or in person) for 15 to 30 minutes time slots based on available time in your calendar. If the product or service you are selling has a short sales cycle (like a book or paid consultation), make sure to add [Buy Now] buttons and keep the buying process quick and simple. These website engagement tactics will help you develop an online relationship with prospects and convert them into leads and sales.
The last important piece of any digital marketing effort is analytics. Make sure to have a good analytics tracking tool installed on your website. Google Analytics is one of the most popular apps of its type, enabling you to track the source, volume and traffic patterns of all website visits. In other words, Google Analytics allows you to track where your website visitors are coming from and what they are doing once they get to your site. Do they bounce, do they stick, do they engage, do they convert to leads or sales? Where do they drop off? A website tracking tool like Google Analytics is critical to the evaluation of your digital marketing efforts. It allows you to compare performance between advertising channels, ad groups, ads and even individual keywords. A Google Analytics Qualified Agency (like AdEdge) will be able to “round up” all of your website traffic and tell you where your paid and unpaid efforts are getting the most traction. With that information, you can make shifts in your marketing investment and optimize remaining channels for even higher performance.
If you need help with website design, digital marketing or Google Analytics, make sure you’re speaking with an agency who has extensive experience and current certifications in Google Ads and Google Analytics. AdEdge Digital Marketing has been offering expert digital marketing management to small and medium-sized businesses for 12 years and we’ve been a Google partner agency for six; and we maintain advanced Google certifications in Paid Search, Banner Advertising and Google Analytics. If you would like a complimentary website evaluation or digital marketing audit, please contact us at 203-682-4585, email anthony@adedgemarketing.com, or schedule a call.