Have you ever wondered what it takes to create an engaging social media ad? The tips and examples in this blog post will help you get started. If you want your social ads to be successful, make sure that they are short and sweet. For example, if you use videos as assets, be sure they’re no longer than 15 seconds. Another tip is to build a button into your creative so the user can click on it. Finally, only the first two headlines are guaranteed to show in a text ad, so it’s important to pin your calls of action either in headline one or two! Great social ads tell the prospect what they should do- engage them based on where they are in the customer journey- regardless of channel.
Read on to find out more about what makes a good ad and some of the most important Digital Marketing News this week!
B2B Marketing News: Most Critical B2B Challenges, Marketers Are In Demand, YouTube’s New Analytics, & Social Video Reach Grows
B2B Better: Customers Vote For The Most Trusted Brands
Apple, Amazon, Adobe, LinkedIn and Google garnered the top five spots among B2B professionals as the most trusted B2B brands, followed by Microsoft, FedEx, HubSpot, UPS, and American Express, according to recently-release survey data of interest to digital marketers. MediaPost
How to Influence B2B Buyers’ Purchasing Decisions [Survey]
71 percent of B2B buyers said that the top influence on their decision to purchase was when a salesperson leads a thorough discovery of their concerns, wants, and needs, followed by 68 percent who said showing what’s possible or how to solve a problem had an significant influence on buying decisions, with the same percentage noting that a salesperson who listens to them affects their purchasing decision, according to newly-released survey data. MarketingProfs
CX Decision-Makers Invest in Tech to Embed Customer Insights Throughout the Organization
Making new technology investments, increasing customer experience (CX) budget, and building a formal CX measurement framework are the top steps being taken to utilize customer insights and feedback in organizations, recently-released report data of interest to online marketers shows. MarketingCharts
https://www.toprankblog.com/2021/06/b2b-marketing-news-061121/
See What Makes a Good Ad: Text, Display & Video Ad Tips
We often describe digital marketing as equal parts art and science.
Ads can be a wonderful conduit for creativity. But they can also be infuriating to come up with or experience (if bad).
In this installment of Ask a PPC, we dive into the question:
“What makes a good ad? Sometimes when I try to get creative, I get hit with eligibility or Quality Score issues.”
This post will be mostly focused on text ads (given the question) but we’ll touch on display, social, and video, as well. Let’s take a look at the mechanics of good ads and creative audits.
Mechanics of Good Ads
Before diving into text/display/social/video-specific mechanics, let’s begin with a general overview of what a good ad does and does not have.
Great ads:
- Tell the prospect to do something.
- Engage the prospect based on where they are in the customer journey.
- Regardless of channel, seamlessly translate brand value and identity.
The last bullet point is often a sticking point for folks who are used to creating ads for one channel but might not have the confidence to test creative for others.
Average ads, on the other hand:
- Rigidly adhere to formulas.
- Focus on the brand instead of the prospect.
- Include content in all spots.
It’s worth noting that your ads can do passably without calls to action (if you can get volume behind them). However, you can’t expect amazing performance from ads that don’t ask viewers to complete an action.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-makes-a-good-ad/409701/?ver=409701X3
How to Configure Google Analytics for Local Businesses
Google Analytics is a super powerful and efficient tool when used properly and when configured accurately. This tells us important information about our website, our visitors, what pages are performing well, perhaps even what search queries we’re coming from, especially when it’s connected with Google Search Console.
1. Exclude bots and spiders
The first one is to exclude bots and spiders. Now this is important because some studies have found that upwards of 25% of all traffic is bot traffic. Any of us that have really gotten super granular into our Google Analytics account, I’m sure we’ve actually seen some of those examples of very obvious bot traffic.
So the way we can actually do this is Google actually makes a nice little tool within Google Analytics. You go to Admin > View > View Settings and there’s a nice little box that says Bot Filtering. What this does is it pulls from the IAB, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and it actually makes sure that it pulls from the list of known spiders and bots and makes sure we’re to filter against that.
2. Filter spam and personal traffic
The next step we want to filter spam traffic and personal traffic. Now the reason for this is inaccurate data is worthless data, right? If we don’t have accurate information, we’re really going to struggle to make accurate business decisions regarding our SEO efforts or our online marketing. I can’t tell you how often I run into business owners who have wildly inaccurate numbers and they’re trying to make decisions based off of it.
The way we can filter out our own traffic is to go to Admin > View > View Filters and then Add Filters. What we want to do is make sure to filter out our own IP address, perhaps the IP address of our team, our home office, our physical main office location, things like this.
3. Set up goals
Number three, setting up goals. Goals are super important because setting up goals actually helps us to track our success, right? It’s success tracking. So we can set up goals by going to Admin > View > Goals and then New Goal.
https://moz.com/blog/google-analytics-for-local-business
4 Known GMB Issues & What To Do About Them – June 2021
1.The 85% Bug and Logo and Cover Photo Not Appearing to Update
In this case, the user is on Google My Business Web or Mobile and sees a message stating that the profile is optimized at 85%. Alongside this message, they see a request to add a logo and cover photo.
The Fix: There isn’t one — yet. If you are experiencing this on mobile, check on desktop and if your logo and cover photo are there, you can rest easy and ignore the warning.
Google My Business is aware of this and has deemed it a low-priority issue.
Why, you may ask? Surely this must be important!
As you will soon see, there are more pressing issues at hand. And as this bug does not affect Google My Business performance, it’s a front-end issue only.
2. Vanishing Listing; It Disappears From GMB Dashboards
Current process: In some cases, listings are mysteriously disappearing from the Google My Business dashboard. There are many cases where we see this as a result of someone removing the listing.
What To Do:
- Ask all managers and owners if anyone has removed (deleted) the listing.
- Ask again!
3. The Kansas Bug Is Still Here… For Now
For quite a while, some service-area businesses have been ranking in Kansas USA, Saskatchewan Canada, and other locations around the world that are central to a geographical region.
What To Do:
Search for your business name and grab a screenshot showing you are ranking in Kansas.
The easiest way to do this is to simply type your name in Google Search and grab a screenshot of your profile, as shown above.
In some circumstances, merchants are seeing (or should I say not seeing) reviews from customers, even though the reviews are thought to be genuine.
Recently, Google implemented a spam algorithm that examines the veracity of user reviews.
In most cases, the algorithm is functioning as intended and reviews that meet certain criteria are not displaying publicly.
What To Do:
Document your listing details and gather screenshots of reviews that are not displaying.
Additionally, if you have the user’s profile link please document that, as well.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/gmb-issues-june-2021/409818/
Google Bans Specific Verticals from YouTube Masthead
It’s being reported that Google will be prohibiting advertising on YouTube’s Masthead from specific verticals. These restrictions come on top of existing restrictions on many of these same verticals.
The affected verticals that are known so far are:
- Alcohol sales
- Gambling
- Prescription drugs
- Election and political ads
Example of a YouTube Masthead Ad for a Desktop Device
The stated reason for restricting these verticals from masthead ads is to improve the user experience.
These verticals are already restricted in that they can be advertised but with limitations. The masthead restrictions placed on these verticals represent a tightening of existing restrictions.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bans-specific-verticals-from-youtube-masthead/410509/
What to Blog About? Here’s 10 Places to Find Inspiring Ideas for Your Next Blog Post
1. Google Suggest
If you aren’t familiar with Google Suggest, it’s that autocomplete feature within the search engine. When you go to Google and start typing a query, Google Suggest tries to guess the rest of your search. While most internet users take this “convenience” for granted, we bloggers see an opportunity. Suggested searches are based on what people are looking for, so these are great cues on what to blog about.
2. Blog topics from keyword research tools
Another way of choosing what to blog about is by researching keywords. You can use any number of keyword research tools, each of which tell you what’s trending in your niche.
3. Ideas from social shares
One of the best ways to find out what people are interested in is watching social media. Whether it’s LinkedIn for business topics, Instagram for the latest craft ideas, or Facebook celebrations of family, social media’s where the action is.
4. Questions that people ask
Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to discover these missing questions with the “People Also Ask” box on Google, or by using sites like Quora. For the first tool you’re benefitting from Google’s AI capabilities. With Quora, you’ll find there are SMEs who answer questions but don’t blog.
https://nealschaffer.com/what-to-blog-about-2/
How to Make Sure Your Email Pops Up in Your Subscribers’ Inboxes
Establish the domain
Most email marketing platforms recommend using a domain at least three to four months old. To be on the safe side, keep your new email address fairly inactive for at least six months before start mass-emailing from it.
Test your email before sending
Various spam filters have all kinds of criteria when flagging or filtering emails as spam:
- Domain age and reputation (how new it is and whether it is blacklisted for suspicious activity)
- Age and reputation of domains linked in the copy
- Hidden links or HTML in the copy (URL shorteners often cause of an email being filtered)
Set up automatic (but smart) follow-ups
No matter how careful you are with your email address and your copy, lots of people still will fail to notice or ignore your email. Following up is so important.
In fact, following up can convert 22% more replies. Without sending a follow-up email, you would have lost one-fifth of your prospects.
Most outreach platforms offer a follow-up option that can be set up and customized in different ways. Although a few case studies show different results depending on how often and how many follow-ups you send, I suggest experimenting with different settings.
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/06/email-subscriber-seen-inbox/
How to Improve your E-A-T for Google
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