Posts

How to Optimize a Paid Search Campaign

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Paid Search Campaign|How to Optimize a Paid Search CampaignPPC campaigns rely heavily on data, but often, there is so much data available that it can muddy the waters. All PPC campaigns need a goal. Otherwise, progress will be limited, and it will be impossible to verify how successful the campaign is/was. Read on to learn how to optimize a paid search campaign.

Budget Allocation

Before the campaign starts, optimize your budget, and decide how much budget you have allocated and where. It is usually sensible to allocate a reasonable proportion of the budget to your brand’s keywords but remember to allocate money to keywords that convert well, too. Regularly review the number of impressions you are getting and adjust your budget accordingly.

Allocate your budget according to which channel performs best. This is important when you are targeting multiple channels or running several paid search campaigns concurrently. Some channels will show a higher conversion rate, but there may be supporting channels that also play a crucial role in those conversions.

Adjust Bids for Time and Location

While adjusting bids for keywords is important, it can also be useful to adjust bid settings for time and location. Look at when you get the most impressions and exclude times when performance is low. This maximizes your budget and results.

Location performance data is equally important. There is little point in allocating a budget to a wide area if most of the locations within that area perform poorly. Focus on key locations that perform well and allocate more of your budget to them.

Search Partners

Whether you are using Google or focusing on a different search engine, like Bing, pay attention to your search partners. Low-performing search partners can be excluded.

Generally speaking, you have to work with both good and bad partners when you use Google and Bing, but tools like this Bing Syndicated Partners spam list from Digital Strike are very useful for identifying less valuable search partners that have no real traffic or fake traffic.

Optimize Landing Pages

Don’t overlook the value of a great landing page. After all, it is pointless spending time and money on a paid search campaign if a poor landing page kills your conversion rate. Bear in mind that a good landing page can really boost conversions, so it is worth investing some of your budget in making improvements to the layout, navigation, and sales copy.

Keyword Performance

Continually review the performance of your chosen keywords against your end goals. If some keywords are not performing as well as you had hoped, despite optimizing location and time, and also landing pages, it may be worth getting rid of them so you can spend more on better-performing keywords.

Review Your Audience Demographic

There will likely be some audience segments that perform better than others. For example, your brand might appeal more to women, or teens. Make adjustments as the campaign progresses and adjust your bids accordingly.
Other areas worth optimizing include how well pages perform on different devices and how your keywords are matched on search queries.

Ways to Update Your Current B2B Website Design

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Ways to Update Your Current B2B Website DesignMany marketers and business leaders believe a website is complete when it goes live. However, a B2B web design needs consistent monitoring and updating to ensure it is still working properly and you are focusing on the right business goals. To update your B2B website design, try these few things.

Do a Website Audit

This doesn’t need to be complicated but is an opportunity to make sure everything on your website is in proper working order. Go through each page and check for issues that need fixing, such as outdated or incorrect information, broken links, style and format issues, broken forms, and technical errors. Regularly doing website audits is one of the most important aspects of updating your website.

Check Your Website Analytics

If you can install tracking and analytics tools on your B2B website, such as Google Analytics, then you can monitor how your current website is performing. Website analytics provide data on things such as the most popular and least popular pages, pages with the highest time on page, pages with the highest bounce rates, which pages are converting visitors into leads, and more. You can see which pages are helping you generate clients and get insights into how to optimize the rest of the site based on this information. One best practice is to do A/B testing on your website. This involves creating different versions of an aspect on the website, such as the CTA, and testing them against each other to see which one performs better or drives more conversions.

Update Keywords

Keywords are an important part of your website and should be updated as your business evolves and changes. Even if you did SEO keyword research when you built your website, it’s likely these keywords will change based on your audience’s preferences and needs. It’s crucial you devote time to checking your keywords regularly. You can use tools to make this an easier process, such as Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, or Moz. You don’t always need to create new content for your keywords, in some cases, you can simply update your existing content to correlate with new keywords. This can be a simple and effective way to make sure that the website is up to date and still relevant without having to do a full website overhaul.

Regularly Publish Blogs

One way to keep your B2B website updated is by regularly writing and publishing blogs. How often you do this depends on your business and availability of copywriting resources. A small company may only be able to post a few times every month, whereas large businesses may have the bandwidth and resources to post every day. In addition to considering how often you publish, think about what you are hoping to accomplish with each blog post and who the target market is for each blog. Regularly posting blogs helps improve brand awareness and establishes your brand as a thought leader in the industry.

Refresh Your Existing Content

Google and search engines reward websites that publish fresh content regularly and adding new content is a quick way to update your B2B web design. When you add new content, it can be a great way to improve your b2b web design. You don’t necessarily need to add new content to accomplish this. You can update or refresh older content that drives traffic to your website. By refreshing existing content, you are creating relevant and fresh content that may even double your traffic. For any business in an industry that is evolving, keeping your website updated and relevant is important. Not only is it important to Google, but it also helps with visitor engagement.

These tips should help to ensure your website is current and relevant. However, every few years it’s important to redesign a B2B website design and content to ensure it’s fresh, consistent with your brand, and reflects current trends in design.

6 Tips to Optimize Your Website for Conversions

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Optimize your website conversions|6 Tips to Optimize Your Website for ConversionsWebsite traffic as a metric is overrated…

Web conversions are where the big boys play!

It doesn’t matter if you have thousands of website visitors. If you can’t convert them into paying customers, your business won’t see the light of day.

The only thing you’ll see on your sales dashboard is “0.” As in, ZERO sales. Ouch!

So your business doesn’t meet its untimely demise, allow me to share with you six tried and tested conversion optimization tips that can skyrocket your web conversions.

Let’s hop right in.

1. Declutter

Remember that your goal is to generate sales, not win the Met Gala award for websites.

While aesthetics is crucial, it’s never the point.

You should always think about conversions with every single element you add to your web design.

Before you add anything, ask yourself this, “Will adding this element influence my web visitors to take action on my offer? Or will it distract them?

If adding an element to your website aids in influencing your web visitors to make a purchase, then go for it.

If not, don’t hesitate to scrap the idea and anything that contributes to why your content isn’t converting (among others).

2. Talk about pain points

“People buy on emotions. They later justify their purchase based on logic.” – Anonymous

You can bet your family jewels that the line above is true.

It’s an established train of thought that most, if not all, conversion optimization specialists subscribe to.

Because emotions lead to sales, you need to evoke emotions out of your web visitors. The more emotional they become, the higher the likelihood they’ll make the purchase.

Talking about their pain points or previous frustrations can do the trick.

When you paint a vivid picture of how frustrating their experience was, they tend to get emotional and make it their life’s ultimate goal not to experience the same frustration ever again.

This compels your visitors to buy your product immediately since you’ve positioned it as the solution to their problems.

Best practices when talking about your customer’s pain points:

  • Use the exact words they’re using to describe their frustrations. Doing this makes your web copy more relatable.
  • Use surveys or talk to your customer service team to learn how exactly your customers are wording their challenges and wins.
  • If you’re a SaaS company, you can visit review platforms, such as Capterra, G2 Crowd, etc., then note the words used by those who left their feedback.

3. Speed up your videos

A slow-loading video is a massive turnoff to web visitors.

Whether they’re looking to buy from you or consume your content, the moment your video buffers, it can easily frustrate your web visitors.

That’s why you need to learn how to speed up your videos.

With a fast-loading video, you give your visitors a pleasant experience while on your website.

They can watch your videos and concentrate on their content without being distracted or frustrated.

Imagine.

If your product videos are wonderfully made and are compelling, can you imagine how much sales you’d get if your videos loaded smoothly?

On the other hand, can you imagine how much sales you’d lose if your videos loaded slowly and a good portion of your web traffic clicked away whenever your videos buffer?

4. Make your website easily navigable

Don’t make it hard for your web visitors to find the products they want to buy by making your website navigation confusing.

Ideally, you’d want them to reach the page they’re looking for within 1 – 3 clicks. The fewer the clicks, the better.

Also, be mindful of where you place your navigation menus, filters, categories, etc.

Your placement needs to be logical and intuitive.

The good news is, some of the best content management software has highly customizable website navigation menus and widgets.

By customizing where and how you place your navigation options to a section of your website that makes sense to your website visitors, it becomes easier for them to navigate your site and find the products or pages they’re looking for.

5. Make your chat support icon highly visible

You need to immediately address whatever barriers will prevent your web visitors from making the purchase.

Whether it’s a question about pricing, product features, or your guarantees, etc., you need to answer within 24 hours. (The sooner, the better.)

When you don’t address your web visitors’ inquiries right away, you allow them to click away, check out your competitor’s website, and potentially buy from your competitors.

What a waste.

After all, they were already on your site, ready to make the purchase.

To address your customers’ inquiries immediately, add a 24/7 chat support feature on your site and make your chat support icon highly visible.

That way, when your customers have questions, they can click your customer support icon, be connected with your customer service representative, and have their inquiries answered.

You can also use robust customer service software with AI chatbots. That way, you can keep the workforce hours for your customer service team from ballooning.

An AI chatbot also gives your customer service team a better work experience since they don’t need to deal with basic, menial, and boring questions.

6. Add one type of call-to-action (CTA) only

Analysis paralysis is real.

There are countless studies made about it, and it proves itself to be true.

That’s why when you design your website; you need to remove whatever elements that will cause your web visitors to experience analysis paralysis.

What’s an example, you might ask?

Adding several types of CTAs is a great example.

If you ask your web visitor to sign up, click your “Buy Now” button, and share your offer on Facebook, there’s a real chance they’ll experience analysis paralysis.

That’s why a rule of thumb that competent conversion rate optimization specialists use is one page, one CTA.

For instance, if you’re offering services to help your clients get content with links, create a landing page with a single CTA.

Doing this keeps your visitors from analyzing anything because there’s only one option.

When the only CTA button on your site is to click your “Buy Now” buttons, your web traffic will have no other choice but to do that.

Get better site conversions now.

Why continue getting abysmal conversion rates when you can apply tried and tested adjustments to get better results?

The strategies shared in this guide might be far from being complete, but integrating these into your web design or marketing campaigns will help you get meaningful and better results.

When Is PPC Outsourcing the Right Move?

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |PPC Outsourcing|When Is PPC Outsourcing the Right Move?Pay per click (PPC) ads can be incredibly valuable, allowing you to generate a reliable stream of traffic to any webpage you choose (and hopefully increasing your sales in the process). But there’s no guarantee you’re going to see a positive ROI by yourself.
Outsourcing your Amazon PPC ad management, Google PPC ad management, or PPC ads with other platforms could be the best move to boost your profitability and save you time. But when is this the right move?

The Benefits of PPC Outsourcing

There are several benefits of outsourcing your PPC ads, including:

  • Time savings. The most important and most obvious benefit is that you save time. Even if you’re only running a small campaign for a business with limited influence, you’re still going to have to spend several hours per week observing your ad performance, making changes to your campaign, and learning new things so that you can improve. If you can spend this time doing more important things, you should have an expert covering these responsibilities for you.
  • A higher ROI. While outsourcing isn’t going to guarantee you a higher ROI (return on investment), most people who begin outsourcing to an experienced expert do tend to see better results than they can get on their own. You might be seeing a positive ROI with your internal management already, but a fresh set of eyes and a trained team of experts will be able to pump those numbers up.
  • External accountability. Don’t neglect the value of having an external party who is accountable for your success. Most PPC ad agencies have a vested interest in keeping your business, which means their biggest priority is keeping you happy. If something goes wrong with the campaign, if you’re not getting the results you want, or if you’re dissatisfied with communication, they’re going to work hard to make up the difference. That could mean offering some pro bono services or overhauling the way they handle your campaign.
  • Access to a team of experts. If you’re managing a campaign on your own or if you have a single person responsible for this task, you should know that working with an agency usually put you in contact with an entire team of experts, each member of which has different specialties and different perspectives. This combination of influence to make your campaigns more creative and more effective.

When Is PPC Outsourcing the Right Move for Your Business?

So when is PPC outsourcing the right move for your business? For starters, you have to be interested in PPC ads, but since PPC advertising is so valuable to most businesses, this isn’t much of an issue.

In addition to that, PPC outsourcing could be the right move if:

  • You don’t have the time to do it yourself. If you’re a business owner, or if you’re the head of the marketing department at this organization, you probably have a lot of responsibilities and not a lot of time. You don’t want to be bogged down with an ad campaign that’s confusing and difficult to manage. If you don’t have much time to spare, simply outsource this need and forget about it.
  • You have a talent shortage. It’s not especially difficult to gain a fundamental understanding of how PPC ads work, becoming a master in this craft can take a lifetime. If you’re struggling to find talented, experienced candidates who can join your team and boost your PPC results, outsourcing could be a valuable shortcut for you.
  • You have many platforms or campaigns to manage. The more complex your campaigns are and the more channels you use to promote your business, the greater your outsourcing needs will be. As you add more platforms and channels to your advertising portfolio, the number and complexity of your responsibilities are going to grow. Don’t hesitate to reach out for additional support.
  • You’ve tried and failed on your own. Be honest. Have you already tried your best at a PPC campaign, only to be disappointed by the final results? If so, don’t feel too bad; it’s difficult to manage a successful campaign with limited experience. But if you’re in this position, don’t double down on this mistake. Seek a partner who can truly help you.
  • You have a reliable partner in mind. Not every PPC agency is worth working with. Make sure you have a reliable partner in mind before moving forward with your outsourcing plans.

There are many good reasons to hire a PPC advertising agency to help you manage your ad campaigns and grow your business. As long as you find a partner who’s truly invested in your success and who has the experts who can hope you see a better ROI, you’ll end up in a better position.

5 Reasons to Hire a Marketing Automation Expert Instead of Going DIY

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Reasons to Hire a Marketing Automation Expert Instead of Going DIYMarketing automation is undoubtedly an excellent way to streamline your marketing operations. It saves you crucial time, money, and makes your work efficient. If you’re like most business owners, you’re always looking for ways to save money and optimize your operations. So, you may be considering doing your own marketing automation instead of hiring a professional. But before you make up your mind, here are some reasons why you should hire a marketing automation consultant.

1. A Marketing Automation Expert Saves You Money and Time

A good number of companies feel that setting up an in-house marketing department is the only way to save money. But hiring a team requires you to pay salaries, benefits, and perhaps even bonuses. Plus, you also have to invest in office equipment such as computers, laptops, printers, etc. On top of that, it’s going to cost a lot more if your employees aren’t familiar with marketing automation software solutions or the latest email marketing trends.

Hiring a marketing automation expert also means you don’t have to spend time training your employees. A professional can set up and configure new programs within hours, instead of days or even weeks you’d need if someone less experienced tried to do it on their own.

2. They Have the Right Knowledge and Experience

Building your own marketing automation solution requires the right knowledge. You need to understand how AI works, how predictive analytics can help you make smarter decisions, how to use chatbots for personalized customer engagement, etc. As a regular business owner, you probably won’t have the time to research all of these concepts, let alone implement them.

An experienced marketing automation consultant will have the necessary knowledge to set up your system properly. They will make sure it uses all available resources to automate processes and save you valuable time.

3. Your Expert Will Guarantee Performance

When you hire a marketing automation expert, they will guarantee the correct implementation and performance. They’ll also take responsibility if their service doesn’t meet your expectations in any way. This is because a professional knows all the factors that affect marketing performance.

For instance, there are dozens of factors that can affect email deliverability. A professional knows how to configure an email service provider’s systems for optimal deliverability. They also know the right time to send emails and which days will maximize your open rates. These are factors they’ll consider when deciding the best campaign strategy for you.

4. An Expert Will Help You Make Smarter Marketing Decisions

A professional will help you make better marketing decisions for your business. They’ll utilize their experience and expertise to best fit your needs. This means that they’ll understand what your competitors are up to, which demographics you should target, which ad networks will generate the most revenue etc. They’ll also keep your budget in mind, which means they’ll recommend the best tools and services for your budget.

5. Expertise in Marketing Automation Means Better ROI

Your marketing automation expert will have a number of years of experience working with different businesses just like yours. This means that they understand what works best for companies in your industry. When you hire a professional, they’ll use their expertise to help you achieve your goals.

For instance, they’ll know which demographics to target and how frequently. They’ll also set up your campaigns in such a way that you get the most out of every ad dollar you spend. All this means is that your return on investment (ROI) will be greater with an expert’s help than if you were trying to do it all yourself.

Hiring a marketing automation expert will save you time and money. It also means you’ll get better results than if you were trying to do it yourself. Hire an expert today so you can focus on what matters most for your business, while they help increase revenue and maximize ROIs.