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Market Segmentation Examples: Target the Right Audience

February 3, 2020 No Comments

In the past, marketers often employed a (rather unpleasantly named) strategy known as spray and pray. This involved marketing their business everywhere they could think of and to anyone who would listen. This kind of marketing was expensive, difficult to measure, and ineffective.

Spray and pray was often combined with batch and blast marketing, which involved creating one email blast and sending it to everyone on their customer list.

This was in the days before the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), so many unsuspecting customers ended up getting emails and other marketing communication that they hadn’t given their consent to receive.

Thankfully, most (but not all) companies have moved on and are using a more targeted and personalized approach to marketing. One of the tactics that savvy marketers are using is called market segmentation.

Overview: What is market segmentation?

Instead of having one huge customer list and sending every message you create to everyone on that list, market segmentation involves splitting customers with similar characteristics or interests into different groups.

Customers can be in multiple different market segments at once. You would then only send your marketing messages to the relevant segment(s).

What are the 4 types of market segmentation?

There are four main types of segmentation that you can use to split customers into more manageable groups. We run through these below and provide market segmentation examples for each one.

Type 1: Geographic segmentation

Location is one basic but important way to segment your customers.

For example, if you want to market ski goggles, you might want to create segments for people who live in states that get a lot of snow and that have particularly good ski resorts.

Or, when creating Thanksgiving promotions, you might want to create a simple segment for all your customers in the U.S.

Examples of geographic segmentation

Geographic segmentation can refer to both a specific location as well as the characteristics of that location. Here are some examples of both:

Climate: It makes sense to only market certain items (such as ski products) to certain climates.
Country: Different countries observe different holidays, so it’s important to make sure you’re sending emails that customers will understand.
City: If you have brick-and-mortar stores, you might want to create promotions that are targeted at certain locations in specific cities.

Type 2: Demographic segmentation

This is one of the most popular methods that marketers use to segment customers, as it’s one of the easiest and quickest segments to set up.

Examples of demographic segmentation

It’s important to remember that some demographic information, such as age, is always changing, so you need to continually update your segments. Here are some examples of demographic segmentation:

Age: You can target different products to different age groups, as well as use different marketing channels and content to cater to different generations.
Gender: While gender is becoming a much less important target market, there are still occasions when you might (and we emphasize might) want to segment by gender, such as marketing pregnancy products toward women.
Income: You could market your more expensive lines to customers with a higher income.
Family situation: Someone who is pregnant or has children may be interested in different products than someone who is single.

Type 3: Behavioral segmentation

While it’s easy to collect geographical and demographical information, behavioral segmentation takes more work since you need to collect and analyze more data on your customers.

Examples of behavioral segmentation

To successfully create behavioral-based segments, you need to understand customer actions. Here are some examples of behavioral segments you can create:

Past purchases: Has a customer bought your product or service before and, if so, was how recently?
Brand loyalty: Do they regularly interact with your brand across different marketing channels or do they regularly buy your product?
User status: Have they just signed up to your newsletter or have they stopped interacting with your brand?

Type 4: Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation is probably the most imprecise type of segmentation, but it also gives you the opportunity to show your customers that you care about them enough to take their interests into account.

Examples of psychographic segmentation

To understand how to create psychographic segments, you need to really listen to your customers so you can understand them better. Here are some examples of psychographic segmentation:

Brand loyalty: Do certain customers particularly like certain brands? For example, if you sell sneakers, you could create a segment of everyone who likes Nike.
Values and beliefs: Do you have customers who are vegan or who only buy organic sustainably made products?
Lifestyle: Do certain customers like to spend a lot of money on certain products, or to buy them often? For example, some customers may want to spend a lot of money on a trendy suitcase, while others may see this as extravagant and only want to buy a basic model.
Interests: If a customer has certain interests, then they might buy specific items more often and buy higher-value products. For example, keen runners will often spend more money on sneakers and buy them more frequently than non-runners.

How to create your own market segmentation

Now you know the different types of segments you can create, it’s time to get practical. Here are the steps you need to take if you want to segment your customer base.

Step 1: Unify your customer data

To create the most accurate, more specific segments, you need to ensure you are collecting as much information as you can on your customers. Record every interaction they have with you and every bit of information they share with you.

Once you have that data, you need to ensure that you store it all in one place, rather than keep your social media data in one location, your email marketing data in another, and your event data in yet another.

When you’ve unified this data, you can start to build up a complete picture of your customers and spot patterns.

For example, you might see that a lot of customers are clicking on articles about vegan skincare in your email newsletter. You can then create a segment of these customers and send them a discount code to encourage them to make a purchase.

Step 2: Create buyer personas

Your segments need to correspond with your business goals and your target market. There’s no point in creating segments of people who live in places where it snows a lot if you don’t sell winter wear.

Putting together buyer personas — which are fictional representations of your ideal customers, including their interests, favorite sites, and demographic data — can help you choose characteristics you want to create segments for.

For example, if your target customer has an income of over $80,000 a year or lives in a major city, then you can create a segment for each of those things.

Step 3: Do your research

Once you’ve created your buyer personas, you need to get as much information as you can on your current and potential customers.

Do keyword research to find out what they are searching for online. Look at what news websites they use or social media channels they favor.

Find out as much as you can on how your competitors segment their customers by signing up for their email newsletters, following them on social media, and browsing their websites.

Step 4: Talk to your customers

This step is particularly useful for psychographic segmentation. The best way to find out a customers’ interests, values, motivations, and beliefs is to ask them directly.

You could create a survey and email it to customers or post questions on social media asking for your customers’ opinions on certain topics. For example, you could ask how many of your customers are vegans.

Step 5: Use your website

Your website is one of your most important marketing channels and an incredibly useful sales and marketing tool, but it’s also often overlooked.

If you want to create behavioral segments, then you need to use your website data. What products or categories are people browsing the most? Which channels are they using to find your website? Which products are they buying?

This information can help you understand which kinds of segments you should be creating.

Step 6: Test, measure and repeat

There is no one magic bullet that will help you create your perfect segment. Some will yield results and some won’t, but you won’t know until you try. That’s why you need to create segments based on the steps above, test the success of your marketing messages against each segment, monitor the performance against your marketing KPIs, and make adjustments as needed.

Methods of market segmentation your small business should try

At The Blueprint, we want to make your life as easy as possible. That’s why we’ve compiled some methods and tools you can use to make the process of setting up customer segments much quicker and easier.

Invest in email list management

One useful way to segment your customers is to use your email list. Leading email marketing software lets you search for common characteristics and surfaces the results. You can then use this data to create segments with just one click.

Mailchimp takes this one step further by analyzing your customer data using its machine learning–based algorithm and building segments automatically based on customer behavior, such as how much time has passed since they last opened one of your campaigns.

For this to work, you need to ensure that you’re managing your email list, which is one of the most important email marketing best practices. This means adding and removing customers from the lists when necessary (such as when they haven’t engaged with your brand in six months).

Create more detailed signup forms

If you want to collect more information on your customers, then you need to create as detailed signup forms as you can without overwhelming customers. To do this, you need marketing or CRM software that allows you to build and design these forms.

SendPulse lets you customize your forms to improve sign-up rate.

SendPulse not only lets you add as many custom fields as you like, you can also choose the type of forms, such as embedded or popup, change the layout from vertical to horizontal, edit the notification text customers receive when they sign up, and track the success of the form in generating signups.

Use lead management software

Lead management software — or a CRM solution that includes lead management functionality — can help you create segments by understanding which of your leads you should prioritize and which you don’t need to focus on based on your marketing metrics and goals.

Lead scoring — a key part of lead management — is a process that determines a customer’s readiness to buy. This is a numerical value that is worked out based on factors such as a customer’s engagement with your company and demographic data.

Insightly provides detailed information about the status of each lead.

Insightly has excellent lead management functionality, as its dashboard provides an at-a-glance view of the status of each lead. Once you’ve worked out which leads are a priority, you can create more accurate segments.

Automate the process

You can’t simply create segments and then just forget about them, but maintaining them manually is a time-consuming process. That’s why you need to invest in a direct marketing solution that comes with dynamic segmentation functionality.

Mailigen provides dynamic segmentation functionality, which means it automatically updates your segments as and when subscribers start and stop meeting your criteria.

Mailigen automatically adds and removes people from your segments.

If a customer hasn’t clicked on any link in your newsletter, that person will be added to a “never clicked” segment. When they click on a link, they’ll be removed from that segment. If they don’t click again for a set period of time, they’ll be added to that segment again, and so on.

The more personalized and targeted, the better

Most people are inundated with emails and social media posts every day, without a hope of opening and looking at every one.

That’s why making sure all your emails and marketing messages are as personalized and relevant as they can be is key if you want to get your customers’ attention. Customer segmentation is crucial to being able to send the most relevant messages to your subscriber base.

Just make sure you’re keeping these segments up to date, retiring any that don’t serve you anymore, and creating and testing new ones on a regular basis.

By Karen McCandless

Sourced from the blueprint

In News

‘Definitely a concern’: Influencer fraud is on the rise again on Instagram

January 31, 2020 No Comments

By Kristina Monllos.

Influencer fraud continues to be a problem for marketers, particularly on Instagram, per a new report.

Despite the company’s efforts to rein in influencer engagement fraud, a report from influencer marketing measurement firm Instascreener has found that fake engagement on Instagram is on the rise again.

According to Instascreener’s data, initially in May after Instagram removed the likes and comments of users from third-party apps, fake influencer engagement rates declined from 1.7% to 1% on certain accounts with the least authentic audiences. But from September to December 2019, the fake engagement rate for those accounts increased from 1% to nearly 1.2% because some influencers who report fake engagement rates were able to figure out workarounds to circumvent Instagram’s methods.

According to agency executives and brand marketers, the problem results from the fact that engagement has been prioritized as the a top metric of success for influencer marketing. Some media buyers and brand marketers say, however, the engagement rate should be considered as only one of many metrics. They said they need to do deeper research to figure out if their influencer marketing practices are working. And marketers said they need to ask influencers to share more of their data directly with advertisers and agencies.

“You can’t necessarily count on Instagram to solve this fake follower program,” said Sean Spielberg, co-founder of Instascreener. “Fake followers and fake engagement is kind of like an arms race. When Instagram creates a new fancy algorithm to detect fraud, someone immediately begins working on ways to get around it,” he added. “Then fraud creeps up again. It won’t ever go to zero if brands and agencies wait for Instagram to solve the problem.”

Instagram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Media buyers told Digiday they are not instructing their clients to pull back from using the platform or influencer marketing. That’s reflected in Instascreener’s report: In 2019 companies spent $1.9 billion on influencer marketing in the U.S. and Canada, with $1.4 billion of that going to influencer marketing on Instagram. Yet, as much as $255 million of the $1.4 billion spent on Instagram was lavished on accounts with fake followers, per Instascreener.

“Engagement fraud is definitely a concern amongst brands and agencies alike,” said a media buyer at a digital agency who requested anonymity. “That said, we have not recommended — nor do we typically see — brands shying away from influencer tactics solely because of engagement fraud concerns.”

Instead of shying away from influencer marketing, media buyers and brand marketers are deeming engagement just one factor in their decision to select influencers to work with rather than the sole reason. “We still use engagement rate as a metric of success,” said a marketer at a major consumer packaged goods company that uses influencers.

“All of us marketers are trying to figure out what is the right metric in the space,” she continued. “We look at likes and comments diagnostically, but we have much more advanced measurements that are closer linked to sales that we leverage as well.” This marketer declined to share which advanced measurements her company relies on to measure the success of influencer marketing.

“Engagement is still an important metric because we want to make sure that our influencer partners are driving conversations with their followers about our brands,” wrote Kristin Maverick, 360i’s vp of social and influencer marketing at 360i, in an email. “We dig into comments to see if the brand is resonating with an influencer’s audience and driving consideration and conversion.”

She added, “But, we also look at other metrics to tell the full story. We use a mix of tools such as tracking sales data from DCM tracking on our clients’ e-commerce sites, discount codes and paid social results.”

Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing shop Village Marketing, said the engagement rate is the wrong measurement for marketers to use in measuring influencer marketing effectiveness. Instead, Segar said marketers should ask influencers to share story views and sticker taps. Segar’s clients also use affiliate codes, enablingmarketers to attribute sales data to influencer marketing.

“Influencer marketing is an industry where people are so confused by the scale,” Segar said. “It’s really hard to look at an influencer and understand what they are doing [for a client]. Marketers need to ask the right questions to fight fraud. Ask for screen grabs of past stories and [length of] story view averages. Ask for one from last week and a month ago.”

Other media buyers said that agencies and advertisers need to adjust how they think about influencer marketing altogether. Instead of using influencers’ on Instagram to realize a direct sale at a particular moment, companies should keep a more “long-term focus” and use influencers’ activity to understand more about their brands and what their consumers want, said Lauren Dubinsky, director of social media for The Variable. That’s something the Clorox Company might be trying to achieve right now as it develops an influencer advisory council.

Shifting their focus to analyze longer-term metrics could be critical for marketers. “In the world of influencer marketing, brand and creator relationships are still key,” said the media buyer. “If a brand can find an advocate who they know has a qualified, passionate audience, engaging in long-term relationships with that creator can lead to better content and confidence in knowing their dollars are not being wasted.”

By Kristina Monllos

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

How Can Internet Marketing Make A Business More Effective?

January 31, 2020 No Comments

By Dmitrii Kustov.

Today’s business environment is full of scrappy entrepreneurs and large, established corporations battling it out for market share. Increasing globalization, the rise of disruptive technologies and significantly more consumer choice have ramped up competition.

Luckily, the internet provides a wealth of tools to even the playing field for every business. Regardless of the sector or industry, internet marketing is today’s “killer app” that brings efficiencies and opportunities to both brick-and-mortar and digital businesses.

Even though internet marketing isn’t exactly new, we continue to see its sheer power in helping businesses accomplish their goals. Whether you aspire to see more revenue growth, brand awareness or both, it is worth your time to study how internet marketing can make your job easier.

Increased Revenue

Today’s internet marketing tools go a long way in helping all types of businesses increase their revenue. While there are many reasons for this, a primary one is targeting. Whether you are leveraging Facebook Ads, using Google AdWords, or collecting emails for your newsletter, internet marketing can help businesses develop closer connections with their target audiences.

Releasing a television ad or billboard ad may seem promising, but there is no guarantee that interested prospects will see the ad. The targeting capabilities of internet marketing, however, can substantially increase the odds that your ideal customer sees your ad. Naturally, getting your product or service in front of interested prospects can help increase your organization’s top-line growth.

To make targeting more efficient, companies have started to leverage the rising sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI). By analyzing customer behavior, search patterns and engagement with your targeted ads, AI can help businesses better understand customers who are more willing to buy. Less time is spent on those who are least likely to make a purchase, allowing businesses to place more attention on prospects who are likely to convert.

To drive revenue growth, internet marketers like me are also increasingly relying on content personalization. Years ago, marketers simply didn’t have the capabilities to offer personalized content at scale. But times have changed. Internet marketers can leverage many tools that make it easier to deliver personalized, relevant content to all audience members.

One great example of personalized content comes from a video marketing campaign by Cadbury. The company saw an opportunity to use personalized videos to better connect with Australian consumers. As part of the campaign, Cadbury matched one of its 12 flavors to users based on certain variables in their Facebook profiles. Some of those variables included location, interests and age. After obtaining consent from interested users, Cadbury automatically created videos that matched audience members with one of Cadbury’s flavors. These personalized videos not only showed the flavor, but were based on photos and personal information from the user’s Facebook page.

According to media reports, the campaign was successful: 90% of viewers watched their personalized video to completion. The company obtained a 65% click-through rate and had a 33% conversion rate of viewers.

These kinds of results don’t have to come at high costs either. You can get started personalizing your own content, even if you have a low budget, by segmenting your email list or creating simple Facebook posts using the same easily accessible user data.

Building Brand Awareness

Internet marketing isn’t just for driving increased revenue. It can also be a game-changer when it comes to building brand awareness in a sector or niche. Building brand awareness is more of a long-term investment, yet it can pay off in spades when your company is releasing a new product or service.

In my opinion, one of the most exciting uses of internet marketing to build brand awareness today centers on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). While both of these technologies are still in their early innings, several companies have already used AR and VR ads to build brand awareness in their sector.

Michael Kors actually became the first brand to try AR ads on Facebook’s Newsfeed. In its AR ad, Facebook users were invited to virtually “try on” a pair of Michael Kors sunglasses. After “trying on” the glasses, participating Facebook users were able to quickly purchase the sunglasses while on Facebook.

As AR and VR technology improves, companies of all sizes will be able to get even closer to their audiences. They can offer unique experiences that introduce audience members to the company’s products or services.

Besides AR and VR ads, internet marketers can rely on live video to build brand awareness. While digital video itself can be extremely effective in building closer connections with prospects, companies that leverage live video can give viewers an intimate look into the company, its employees, and its products and services. Through live video, audience members can see that the company is a collection of people trying to create value in customers’ lives.

As an example, Buzzfeed was one of the first publishers to effectively leverage live video to build brand equity. One of its most famous live videos involved two people using rubber bands to crush a watermelon. With this simple premise, Buzzfeed was able to gather approximately 800,000 live viewers at the end of the video.

The exploding watermelon video was quintessentially Buzzfeed. Viewers tuning in quickly discovered that Buzzfeed released content that was fun, entertaining and educational. The brand was able to get closer to its targeted audience, which it could then use to grow its social media following.

Helping Accomplish Your Business Goals

Internet marketing is just one part of an overall marketing strategy. Nevertheless, it continues to be relevant as we enter the new decade. Whether you are just implementing an internet marketing strategy or have been doing so for some time, paying attention to these trends can help take your business to the next level.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Dmitrii Kustov

Dmitrii Kustov is the Internet Marketing Director and Founder of Regex SEO located in Houston. Read Dmitrii Kustov’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How Publishers Can Find Pockets Of Growth Amid Drop In Ad Spending

January 31, 2020 No Comments

By Rob Williams

Many media channels can expect a banner year in 2020. The Summer Olympics and the presidential election will help drive ad spending to new records. Unfortunately, newspapers and magazines won’t participate in that growth without developing their digital outlets.

Magazine ad revenue will slump 9.7% this year to $9.8 billion, a steeper decline than the 9.1% drop to $11.8 billion for newspapers, according to estimatesconsulting firm Winterberry Group published last week.

The forecast shouldn’t surprise anyone in the publishing industry, following a year of consolidation, widespread job cuts and dozens of stories about the threat of “news deserts.” The trends are disheartening, but there are some pockets of opportunity for publishers, as the Winterberry report also suggests.

U.S. digital ad spending will expand by about 15% to $166.4 billion this year. It is becoming more fragmented as newer categories such as influencer marketing and digital video carve out a bigger share.

While search and paid social will be the biggest categories, publishers can find room for growth in display ads and possibly in digital audio formats like podcasts.

Winterberry forecasts that digital audio advertising will expand by 15% to $3.4 billion, a market that publishers are well positioned to dominate by repurposing written content as spoken-word audio.

Even in the realm of offline advertising, publishers can find growth in experiential marketing and sponsorships of live events, where spending is forecast to grow by 3.1% to $48.5 billion, making it the second-biggest category after linear TV.

Aside from offline and online advertising, publishers can build their revenue from subscriptions, paywalls, licensing and affiliate fees from online marketplaces. Building those businesses requires specialized expertise, but it can be done.

By Rob Williams

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

Netflix is still saying ‘no’ to ads

January 30, 2020 No Comments

By Sarah Perez

Despite ongoing speculation and investor pressure, Netflix is still declining to adopt an advertising-based business model as a means to boost its revenue, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings confirmed on Tuesday. The company on its Q4 earnings call again shot down the idea of an ad-supported option, with Hastings explaining there’s no “easy money” in an online advertising business that has to compete with the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Explained the exec, “Google and Facebook and Amazon are tremendously powerful at online advertising because they’re integrating so much data from so many sources. There’s a business cost to that, but that makes the advertising more targeted and effective. So I think those three are going to get most of the online advertising business,” Hastings said.

To grow a $5 billion to $10 billion advertising business, you’d need to “rip that away” from the existing providers, he continued. And stealing online advertising business from Amazon, Google and Facebook is “quite challenging,” Hastings added, saying “there’s not easy money there.”

“We’ve got a much simpler business model, which is just focused on streaming and customer pleasure,” he said.

The CEO also noted that Netflix’s strategic decision to not enter the ad business has its upsides, in terms of the controversies that surround companies that collect personal data on their users. To compete, Netflix would have to track more data on its subscribers, including things like their location — that’s not something it’s interested in doing, he said, calling it “exploiting users.”

“We don’t collect anything. We’re really focused on just making our members happy,” Hastings stated.

That’s not exactly true, of course. Netflix does track viewership data in order to make determinations about which of its original programs should be renewed and which should be canceled. It also looks at overall viewing trends to make decisions about which new programs to greenlight or develop. And it tracks users’ own interactions with its service in order to personalize the Netflix home screen to show users more of what they like.

The company also this quarter introduced a new viewership metric — “chose to watch,” which counts the number of people who deliberately watched a show or movie for at least two minutes. That’s far longer than Facebook or Google’s YouTube, but isn’t a great way to tell how many people are watching a show to completion, as on TV.

However, none of this viewership tracking is on the scale of big tech’s data collection practices, which is what Hastings meant by his comment.

“We think with our model that we’ll actually get to larger revenue, larger profits, larger market cap because we don’t have the exposure to something that we’re strategically disadvantaged at — which is online advertising against those big three,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Netflix’s CEO has had to repeat the company’s stance on being an ad-free business. In Q2 2019, Netflix reminded investors in its shareholder letter that its lack of advertising is part of its overall brand proposition.

“When you read speculation that we are moving into selling advertising be confident that this is false,” the letter said.

Analysts have estimated Netflix could make over a billion more per year by introducing an ad-supported tier to its service.

To some extent, the increased push for Netflix to adopt ads has to do with the changes to the overall streaming landscape.

Netflix today is facing new competition from two major streaming services, Disney+ and Apple+ — both of which have subsidized their launch with free promotions in order to gain viewership. In the next few months, Netflix will have to take on several others, including mobile streaming service Quibi, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and NBCU’s Peacock. The latter features a multi-tiered business model, including a free service for pay-TV subscribers, an ad-free premium tier and one that’s ad-supported.

The service was introduced to investors last week, where it was well-received.

Other TV streaming services also rely on ads for portions of their revenue, including Hulu and CBS All Access. Meanwhile, a number of ad-supported services are also emerging, like Roku’s The Roku Channel, Amazon’s IMDb TV, TUBI, Viacom’s Pluto TV and others.

Netflix’s decision to keep itself ad-free is likely welcome news for its subscriber base, however, who see the lack of ads as being a key selling point.

Feature Image Credit: Ernesto S. Ruscio/Getty Images / Getty Images

By Sarah Perez

Sourced from TechCrunch

In Uncategorized

Google’s latest search results change further blurs what’s an ad

January 30, 2020 No Comments

By Deanna Ting

Users of Google search on desktops may have noticed a slight change over the last week and that change is affecting what they perceive as an ad. This represents a further blurring of the lines between ads and organic sources in search.

Beginning Jan. 13, Google redesigned its desktop search experience to feature favicons, or preferred icons, next to every single entry, including an ad. Always shown at the top of a page of search results, ads receive the same favicon treatment: the word “Ad” appears in bold, yet small black lettering. Site owners can also choose their featured favicon.

This redesign first appeared in May on Google search for mobile devices. At the time, Google said the move was prompted by a desire to help users “better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what [they’re] looking for.” Bringing that same design to desktops this month adds to the consistency of the search experience, regardless of the device, according to Google.

This isn’t the first time Google has changed the look of ads in search.

“What an ad looks like has gotten more subtle over the years,” said Brooke Osmundson, associate director of paid search for NordicClick, a pay-per-click agency. “It’s started to blur the lines between what users thought was an ad or wasn’t.”

Search Engine Land has posted a helpful infographic showing how Google’s design tweaks in search have evolved, so users find it heard to distinguish between what’s an ad and what is not.

The concept of banner blindness loosely applies here, said SEO consultant Bill Hartzer. Now that all search results and ads have favicons, “searchers will see the favicons and overlook them, also ignoring the ‘Ad’ favicon as well,” he said. “So, they’re going to be more likely to click more on ads, which will benefit advertisers. But, in the long run, it will also benefit Google.”

Early results from NordicClick seem to support that theory. Osmundson pulled data for four different clients, comparing their respective search engine ads’ click-through rates (CTR) during Jan. 7 to 13 with those during Jan. 14 to 20, after Google’s desktop search changes went into effect.

For all four clients (a local health care company, two business-to-business companies and an e-commerce company), the desktop click-through rates increased and ranged from 4% to 10.5%. All clients had slight declines in the click-through rates on mobile devices.

Last May for three of those four companies, after Google made its mobile search changes, mobile click-through rates increased 17% to 18% for two companies during the May 24 to 30 stretch, as compared with the May 17 to 23 period.

“If we see increased CTR, we might be spending through our budgets more quickly than we realized,” Osmundson said. “That’s great for our clients but in marketing we need to do more due diligence in our jobs to make sure they have a good user experience on the site to see our dollars work a little bit harder for us.”

David Ogletree, owner of the WME Training pay-per-click training company, however, did not find a significant increase in click-through rates when he pulled similar data for his clients. “There was essentially hardly a change at all back in May and now in January, too,” he said, referring to data he pulled for his 50 clients.

And RPA Advertising has also not detected a change. “We haven’t seen a noticeable impact on our clients’ paid versus organic search traffic,” said Anthony So, group director of search for RPA. “Favicons will have a stronger impact in verticals that consist of a lot of affiliate marketing partners.”

Following the changes made to mobile search in May, Hartzer conducted his own experiment to see what would happen if he used the same “Ad” favicon on his own website. (The “Ad” favicon was active in search for three days in May until Google removed it.)

“When I added the ‘Ad’ favicon on my site, and Google showed it in the organic search engine results, there were less clicks, as the ‘Ad’ text (favicon) was next to the listing in the search engine results,” Hartzer said, adding that the results did not surprise him because right at that time people were still becoming accustomed to seeing the “Ad” favicons next to search results.

Over time, however, banner blindness will take hold, Hartzer suggested. And when users unconsciously ignore the “Ad” favicon, advertisers will see higher click-through rates, he said.

Banner blindness is also something RPA’s SEO lead Ethan Hulbert is concerned about. “Google points to its non-English searches to show that the translated label is more differentiable,” he wrote by email. “For instance, a French search on google.fr will bring up ads labeled with the full ‘Annonce,’” Hulbert said. “But since most searches we care about are English, this gives us little comfort.”

Added Hulbert: “I think this trend is worth paying attention to, and expect it to have a muted effect over time.”

While Ogletree did not see any change in click-through rates for his clients following Google’s search design changes, this will ultimately benefit advertisers and, of course, Google, he observed.

“Every decision they make is to get more money from advertisers,” Ogletree said. In the third quarter of 2019, Google parent company Alphabet made nearly $34 billion from advertising alone.

By Deanna Ting

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

Brands of the Future Will Thrive By Operating With a Higher Perspective

January 30, 2020 No Comments

By Hayley Romer.

It’s the most efficient route toward long-term success

When was the last time you looked up? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately.

Amid endless to do lists and nonstop distractions, we spend our days overwhelmed with urgency. We’re so focused on what matters right now that we rarely take the time to look ahead and consider what will matter next.

What we all need is more time to spend thinking, to prove an idea, to do the things that inspire us. But time is the one thing that we’re not often afforded.

As business leaders, our success is often measured by delivering immediate results. So it’s no surprise that we spend the majority of our time focused on the day to day. According to a recent CMO survey, two out of three marketing leaders tend to focus on “managing the present” rather than “preparing for the future.”

Of course, we all know we need to look further ahead to promote long-term success for our businesses. History has proven this again and again.

Think of Disney. The company that launched as an animation studio took the notion of entertainment and film and brought it to life across experiences from theme parks to travel to stores. Today, nearly 200 years after launching, Disney is one of the most successful companies in the world. Or consider IBM. A decade ago, they made a decision to stand apart from competitors and stop selling hardware. Instead, they focused on their intelligence products like Cloud and Watson that imbued that hardware with value and functionality.

Disney and IBM have one thing in common. They looked up from the present, and in doing so, they charted a path to long-term success. This is what I mean by having a higher perspective and how you can apply these principles to your own ways of working to drive success in the decades to come:

Investigate deeper human truths

It’s easy to get caught up in trends, but brands of substance that endure can separate fads from fundamental shifts and uncover the underlying drivers of change.

We can all do this with a mindset shift. Rather than fixate on the present, create space for higher order thinking. Get into the habit of asking why an issue or story is resonating, why certain behaviors are changing. What you are missing about your audience and how their attitudes are evolving.

Find the answer to these questions and apply the learnings to evolve your brand to meet consumers’ changing needs.

Stand apart from competitors by taking a bolder, unconventional approach

A recent study shows that 63% of global consumers prefer to purchase products and services from companies that stand for a purpose. That shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this, as purpose has become paramount across the industry.

However, it’s becoming increasingly harder to stand out. Only 12% of consumers can link brands and the causes they support.

Purpose-driven brands need to take a bolder point of view and apply unexpected perspectives or lenses, to stand apart, even on mainstream issues.

Remember the medium is the message

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” The media landscape is vastly different today than it was 50 years ago, but we’d all be wise to remember McLuhan’s advice. The channels through which a message is shared can say a lot about a brand. Choose credible partners that not only elevate the perception of your brand but connect with an audience using a conscious, engaged mindset.

Create time for clarity

As leaders, we need to create space for our teams for higher perspective thinking. An average worker spends 1,700 hours a year in front of their computer, but great ideas don’t come from sitting still. They come from experiencing the world, collaboration and cultural insight.

Encourage your teams—and give them the time—to leave the office. Schedule an offsite devoted to hacking an issue that’s been unsolved. Go on a field trip to inspire more creative thinking.

The beginning of a new decade creates the opportunity to look up and look ahead. It is essential we not only make the time do so but absolutely hold ourselves accountable; we are creating and living our own future now.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images. The beginning of a new decade creates the opportunity to look up and look ahead.

By Hayley Romer

Hayley Romer is the publisher and chief revenue officer of The Atlantic.

Sourced from ADWEEK

In News

Google Ads Makes Parallel Tracking Mandatory for Video Campaigns

January 29, 2020 No Comments

By Matt Southern.

Google Ads is making parallel tracking available for video campaigns, which is optional for now but will soon become mandatory.

Parallel tracking is designed to improve mobile site speed by bringing visitors directly to the landing page while measuring the ad click in the background.

Due to the importance Google places on site speed, parallel tracking is already mandatory for Search, Shopping, and Display campaigns. As of March 30th it will also be mandatory for all video campaigns.

Google emphasizes the benefits of parallel tracking:

“Your mobile site speed matters now more than ever. In fact, retail advertisers saw that a one-second delay in mobile load times can impact conversion rates by up to 20%… On average, we’ve seen that advertisers who adopt parallel tracking have reduced page load time by up to 5 seconds.“

How to Turn on Parallel Tracking

Advertisers can turn on parallel tracking by following the steps below:

Sign in to your Google Ads account.
In the navigation menu, click All campaigns.
In the page menu on the left, click Settings.
Click Account Settings.
Click Tracking.
Click the switch next to “Parallel tracking” to turn it on.

Before turning on parallel tracking, Google advises advertisers working with a click measurement provider to make sure their system is compatible with it.

Compatibility with parallel tracking will vary based on which features are enabled. A click measurement provider will be able to advise on what to do if there is an incompatibility.

By Matt Southern

Matt Southern has been the lead news writer at Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a degree in communications, Matt … [Read full bio]

Sourced from Search Engine Journal

In News

What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Experiential Content

January 29, 2020 No Comments

By Lane Ellis.

Experiential content will help drive 2020’s digital agenda, and savvy B2B marketers should take notice.

Experiential is a word with subtly differing meanings depending on which setting it’s used in, however at the core of each definition is the fact that it all boils down to experiences.

Experiential content makes us a central part of a story, and not just a passive subject receiving a one-way brand message.

Use of experiential content has grown over the past several years as online technologies have reached a level capable delivering vibrant and engaging motion and sounds alongside clickable, swipable, and all other manner of interactivity to put you front and center.

TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden recently mentioned experiential content in his annual list of the top ten B2B digital marketing trends for 2020.

“Visual, experiential content that is easy to find and satisfies business buyer’s needs to be informed, entertained and inspired will continue to be areas of focus.” @LeeOdden Click To Tweet

With 98 percent of consumers more likely to make a purchase after an experience (Limelight), and 77 percent having chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that delivers a personalized service or experience (Forrester), why haven’t more B2B marketers begun to use experiential content?

Experiential Content’s Advantages

In a seemingly million-message-a-minute online world, experiential content offers a number of advantages.

It removes us from all other messaging, if only for a short while, and allows us to enter a world under our own control, where we can interact as we see fit, learning or buying at our own pace, all while creating a story that intertwines us with brand information and messaging.

In 2020 experiential content comes in many forms, no longer limited to just the real-world selfie booths and similar elements of the past, with just a few examples listed here:

Virtual Reality (VR)
Augmented Reality (AR)
Cloud-Based Digital Assets from Ceros and Other Platforms
Quizzes and Polls
Interactive Flipbooks and eBooks

In a way online gaming has been leading the way for decades when it comes to digital experiential content, and only recently have brands and marketers started to bring this power to B2B advertising campaigns.

An example of experiential content comes in the form of our Break Free of Boring B2B Guide, featuring interactive insight from a variety of B2B marketing industry influencers. Click here to enter the full-screen experience.

Experiential Marketing Embraces Digital Storytelling

Experiential content is also intertwined with both storytelling and customer experience (CX), together forming an extremely powerful triptych of B2B marketing strategy.

As a key component of experiential content, storytelling becomes even more personal and memorable when you’re a key part of the messaging experience a brand is sharing, and being remembered is more important — as well as more difficult — today than ever, which is why forward-thinking B2B marketers are utilizing experiential tactics in their 2020 tool-kits.

The importance of storytelling in the customer journey has become less of a secret in the past five years, as marketing experts and the data to back up the fact have combined to make brand storytelling a trend for the decade ahead.

“Experiential content’s role in powerful storytelling will be an increasing theme among B2B marketers looking to drive next-generation brand efforts.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis Click To Tweet

Experiential Marketing Embraces Great CX

The other key element of experiential content — CX — appears to offer an ideal match, combining to form two important facets of successful B2B marketing.

What better way to deliver a stellar customer experience than by creating memorable brand storytelling using experiential content?

Two years ago we saw the rise of real-world physical pop-ups from the likes of 29Rooms achieving considerable success on Instagram and other social media platforms, however a shift to creating these worlds virtually online as immersive experiential content has taken place in 2019 and into 2020.

Experiential content also appears in WARC’s recently-released ninth-annual marketers report for 2020, which places it alongside purpose and product as three of the most important elements needed for brands to achieve greater success this year.

Some marketers and brands are pulling back from an over-investment in technology that has taken a certain amount of focus away from creativity, the same report’s survey data shows.

Indeed, among the survey’s respondents — almost 800 global client and agency-side executives — one of the top elements comprising experiential content, VR and AR, was seen as being one of the most important emerging technologies in 2020.

Another big part of experiential content is online video, a near-unanimous selection on most top marketing trend lists, as it continues to receive the type of swift growth in ad spend dollars that has helped make online video a big success for Instagram, YouTube, and increasingly TikTok.

Over 80 percent of marketers plan to increase spending for online video in 2020, with 33 percent planning to boost spending on TikTok this year, according to the WARC survey. In the U.S. alone digital video spedning is expected to increase by over 31 percent in 2020, to $5 billion. (Winterberry Group)

“Being creative while retaining consistency of brand is key to unlocking the benefits of brand-building: from forging emotional attachments, to driving long-term brand equity and sales influences.” — Simon Cook @Cannes_Lions Click To Tweet

Cloud-based experiential content platform Ceros offers both an overview guide and an on-demand webinar for learning more about the technology, and offers up their own take on just what the term means.

“Experiential content is digital content that is purposefully designed to create an immersive experience for its consumers through some combination of interactions, animations, embedded media, and storytelling. It encourages active participation in an effort to form memorable, emotional connections between the consumer and the brand or creator,” Ceros notes.

“Experiential content makes us a central part of a story, and not just a passive subject receiving a one-way brand message.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis Click To Tweet

Bake More Experiential Goodness Into Your B2B Efforts For 2020

via GIPHY

We’ve looked at what experiential content is, explored a few examples of how B2B brands are using it successfully, and showed how it is likely to see growing adoption in 2020 and beyond.

It takes considerable time, effort, and resources to implement a standout experiential content campaign, which is why many brands turn to a dedicated agency.

TopRank Marketing had the honor of being named by Forrester as the only B2B marketing agency offering influencer marketing as a top capability in its “B2B Marketing Agencies, North America, Q1 2019” report.”

Finally, here are several additional related resources we’ve put together to help you build your own interactive content:

By Lane Ellis

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In News

New study: Majority of consumers are unaware of how search engines work

January 29, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Search Engine Watch.

As brands and their marketing departments deploy strategies to capitalize on record ecommerce spending — which soared to $586.92 billion in 2019 — new research from leading provider of brand protection solutions, BrandVerity, has brought to light important findings and hidden risks pertaining to the journeys consumers are taking online.

In order to give brands a better understanding of the search experiences their customers are having and how they are impacting brand perception and customer experience, BrandVerity commissioned the “BrandVerity’s Online Consumer Search Trends 2020” research study in Q4 of 2019 to over 1,000 US consumers, balanced against the US population for age, gender, region, and income.

Amongst the many findings, three main themes stood out:

Consumers confused by how search engine results work

Only 37% of consumers understand that search engine results are categorized by a combination of relevance and advertising spend.

The other 63% of consumers believe that Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are categorized by either relevance or spend, or they simply “don’t know.”

Additionally, nearly 1-in-3 consumers (31%) say they don’t believe search engines (e.g. Google) do a good job of labeling which links are ads.

Consumers more inclined to click on the result that appears first

Without a clear understanding of how search results are served up, consumers are more inclined to click on the result that appears first, believing it to be the most relevant option.

With 54% of consumers saying they trust websites more that appear at the top of the SERP, this isn’t just an assumption.

Consumers feel misled by the websites they find in the search engine results

51% of consumers say that when searching for information on a product, they sometimes feel misled by one of the websites in the search results.

An additional 1-in-4 report feeling misled “often” or “always.”

Even further, 25% also say they often end up somewhere unexpected that does not provide them with what they were looking for when clicking on a search result.

“Against a backdrop where consumers have increasingly high expectations of the brands they do business with, and are holding them to equally high standards, companies must ensure that the entirety of the experiences they provide meet customer expectations,” said Dave Naffziger CEO of Brandverity.

“As these findings show, a general uncertainty of how search engines work, combined with the significant occurrence of poor online experiences, mean oversight of paid search programs is more important than ever for brands today.”

Sourced from Search Engine Watch.