Every business wants to grow, but acquiring new customers isn’t easy. If it was, every business would be a success.
Thankfully, the internet has made it easier than ever to connect with new potential customers and grow your audience. The catch is that you can’t keep using the same strategies you relied upon in a few years ago. Instead, you have to get a new strategy for the digital age.
To help you get started forming a new winning strategy for customer acquisition in 2016, Eliv8 has shared an infographic that will help you effectively grow your business.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-12-28 15:51:262015-12-28 15:51:267 Winning Strategies For Growing Your Business In 2016 [Infographic]
After months of waiting, advertisers will finally be able to start buying Promoted Pins, starting in January.
The company officially announced Promoted Pins, its first advertising unit, last January, however it has limited access to a small number of partner advertisers. It has gradually given access to the service to more businesses, including some small and medium businesses, but most have been left waiting for a widespread rollout.
Well the wait is nearly over, according to an announcement made yesterday by Tim Kendall, Pinterest’s monetization chief.
“The business is scaling very rapidly,” Kendall told USA Today.
The company also announced it has reached over one million active business accounts globally yesterday.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/Pinterest-logo.jpg00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-12-16 13:56:532015-12-16 13:56:53Pinterest Will Open Promoted Pins To All Advertisers In January
Most online advertisers consider conversion tracking an essential part of their toolkit. After all, why pour money into advertising if you can’t properly see how effective it is and optimize it? However, there are many businesses who are not using conversion tracking or importing goals from Google Analytics into AdWords. Google says they have a new feature just for them.
The new Smart Goals are powered by Google Analytics and aim to help businesses without a way to measure conversions evaluate their advertising efforts and optimize their campaigns.
Unlike conversion tracking and Analytics goals, Smart Goals don’t measure actions taken directly on an advertiser’s website. Instead, it uses the anonymized conversion data collected from other websites by Google Analytics to identify visits “most likely” to convert based on Google’s estimate.
To generate Smart Goals, we apply machine learning across thousands of websites that use Google Analytics and have opted in to share anonymized conversion data. From this information, we can distill dozens of key factors that correlate with likelihood to convert: things like session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser. We can then apply these key factors to any website. The easiest way to think about Smart Goals is that they reflect your website visits that our model indicates are most likely to lead to conversions.
To set up Smart Goals, advertisers will need to link their Analytics and AdWords accounts and must receive at least 1,000 clicks rom AdWords over a 30-day period “to ensure the validity of your data.” From there, select Smart Goals, under Goals in the Admin tab.
Advertisers can even preview well Smart Goals can work for their site before activating it by exploring the new “Smart Goals” page under Conversions in Analytics. This page lets you analyze the behavior of Smart Goals visits and compare those to the visits deemed unlikely to convert. If you like what you are seeing, you can then import Smart Goals into AdWords.
Once Smart Goals have been imported, advertisers can set a target cost per acquisition (CPA) with the Smart Goals being the acquisition. The announcement says, “in this way, you’re able to optimize your AdWords spend based on the likelihood of conversion as determined by our model.”
Google says Smart Goals will be rolling out over the next few weeks. While it may serve as a reasonable solution for some businesses, for most Smart Goals may seem like a bit of a stop-gap solution. To really take control of your online advertising and guarantee you are getting your money’s worth, you will want to use conversion tracking,
If you need help getting started, contact us. We can get you set up and help you optimize your advertising to ensure the best results.
The holiday shopping season is in fever pitch, which means most business owners and marketers are going full-steam-ahead on their online marketing strategies to rake in their piece of the $650 billion predicted to be spent this year.
So how can you get in on the action? Pixel Road Designs recently shared an infographic that can give your holiday marketing strategies the extra boost they need to make this holiday season a huge success.
Check out the infographic below, or at Pixel Road Designs’ website here.
Since launching in spring, Google AdWords’ structured snippet extensions have shown themselves to be a powerful tool in the AdWords arsenal.
Structured snippets add an extra line of information with your text ads which specifically highlight important information for searchers. When implemented well, this can boost click-through rates for ads.
Now, Google has made these structured snippets even more visible in the search results by doubling the amount of information that can accompany text ads.
To do this, advertisers can select two predefined “Headers” which act as structured snippets. Then, those headers can be customized with two unique sets of values. Depending on the search results, these snippets have the potential to be displayed at the same time.
Google does say that each structured snippet extension is treated as its own ad auction, and like other ad extensions, may not always appear together.
You can boost the chances of having both extensions display at the same time by being thorough and providing as much information as you can. With more information, the ad auction is better able to select the highest quality combination of extensions. Not only does this improve your chances of having both snippets show at the same time, it also increases your overall ad performance.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-12-08 12:16:572015-12-08 12:16:57AdWords Doubles Amount of Info In Stuctured Snippets
While apps have become the hottest trend for smartphones, the market for apps can be incredibly competitive and hard to break through. Mobile users have limited space on their phone for apps, so they can be hesitant to try out new apps, especially if they are new or relatively-unknown. Even when users do download apps, they often only use it once and forget about it.
Now, Google has launched a new service to let users try out any app they want without having to use up their precious hard drive space. The company has launched a new streaming mobile ad feature that allows users to access a short 60-second or less version of the app that responds just like the full app.
Sissie Hsiao, Google’s head of product for mobile ads, says the goals of this new feature is to help app developers connect with the right users. In a statement to TechCrunch, she explained:
“You can buy ads, you can get apps installed. But a lot of apps are used once or they’re never used, even after they’re installed. We found that 1 in 4 apps is never even used, and there’s often this ‘try once’ experience, and then [the app is] never used again.”
The new streaming mobile ads, called “Trial Runs” allow users to try the app without downloading, which will hopefully help limit the number of “one and done” app downloads. Instead, it will motivate developers to focus on targeting a more refined audience who will be more likely to gully engage with the app.
The new feature is currently available to a limited number of testers, with no word of when to expect a full rollout.
While Black Friday sales are in a slump, a new king of the holiday shopping season is rising. The results Cyber Monday are coming in and estimates suggest this year broke e-commerce sales records for the biggest day of online sales in US history.
According to Adobe, online sales hit over $3 billion dollars on Cyber Monday. Their report says 200 million visits to 4,500 retail websites generated $3.06 billion, rising 16 percent from last year.
Approximately 26 percent of those sales came from mobile devices, accounting for $799 million in sales. The majority of those sales ($575 million) came from Apple iOS devices. In comparison, Android devices drove just $219 million in mobile sales.
ChannelAdvisor and Custora have found similar results in their analysis of Cyber Monday sales.
ChannelAdvisor says Cyber Monday sales leaped 18 percent year over year on a same-store-sales basis. They found mobile devices accounted for 43 percent of traffic, however their results also found consumers are still relying on desktops to make the final purchase. Their analysis says 24 percent of sales came from smartphones.
Custora’s findings estimate e-commerce revenue climbed 16.2 percent from last year, with tablets and phones driving 26.9 percent of all Cyber Monday sales.
The notable increase in Cyber Monday sales may be due to bigger discounts than expected, with an average discount of 21.5 percent.
Another notable report from HookLogic says the average order value among advertisers on its platform hit $134 on Cyber Monday, just below the $137 AOV seen on Black Friday. Interestingly, carts had fewer items on Cyber Monday, which suggests consumers waited for the online sales to make their purchase.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-12-02 15:36:322015-12-02 15:36:32Cyber Monday Breaks E-Commerce Record For Most Online Sales
If you’re looking to boost your share of holiday customers at the last moment, Facebook and Instagram have a new feature that will be of interest to you.
The companies are rolling out a new ad-targeting segment aimed at helping brands focus in on shoppers who are engaged with content related to holiday shopping, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The ad segments, which will run from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, act like any other ad format on their advertising networks.
Facebook says it will compile this audience by watching for holiday-related keywords in posts that people publish, like, comment on, and share. From there, the audience is aggregated and anonymized, like all Facebook ad-segments.
The holiday ad segment is available now within Facebook self-service ad dashboards, in the “Behaviors” section under the “Seasonal and Events” category.
With the holiday shopping season kicking into high gear, Google is rolling out new features to help retailers maximize their sales. Google announced two new AdWords features this week aimed at helping businesses keep in contact with customers during the holiday shopping season, even when they are offline.
Subscribe To Text Updates
The first feature is a brand new ad unit that grants retailers the ability to send marketing messages straight to customer’s phones. The new unit allows users interested in being kept up to date with the latest specials and deals opt-in to text message updates when searching from their phones.
Users just have to tap the “Subscribe” button and they will be set to receive text messages from businesses through Google. Once subscribed, they will receive relevant updates and announcements, like limited time sales or special unique promotions.
To unsubscribe, customers can reply “STOP” at any time.
To protect user privacy, Google will not provide customer phone numbers directly to advertisers, and retailers will not have the ability to contact anyone directly. Instead, Google will act as the messenger, delivering any updates from businesses to consumers.
Holiday Structured Snippets
AdWords also announced a new extension to existing ad units to highlight holiday specific deals, called ‘holiday structured snippets.’ The new feature is specifically designed to promote holiday shopping deals specifically for Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
The new structured snippet acts the same as any other, and is accessible through a simple drop down menu which allows you to select either “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” as the header of an ad extension.
These snippets are unique for being able to promote a single offering for a specific holiday promotion, while standard structured snippets require at least three offers.
Google says Black Friday structured snippets will not begin appearing in search results until November, 20, running through November 27. Cyber Monday ads will be shown November 20, through November 30.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-11-16 15:19:372015-11-16 15:19:37AdWords Announces Two New Features For The Holiday Shopping Season
After months of anticipation, Pinterest’s Buyable Pins have finally come to Android. The long-awaited e-commerce feature was launched for iPhone and iPad users back in July, but the service only started rolling out for Android users last week.
The company also announced that it is launching “The Pinterest Shop,” which is a curated collection of Buyable Pins and products from retailers.
With Buyable Pins, Pinterest users are able to purchase items from retailers with just a few clicks and never have to leave the social bookmarking platform. It is a great time for Pinterest to be rolling out Buyable Pins to Android users, as the holiday season is starting to kick into gear.
Pinterest has reportedly been pleased with the success of Buyable Pins. The company said the number of Buyable Pins on the network had more than doubled to 60 million and that the feature was largely bringing in new customers.
Last month, the company expanded access to the service to three more major e-commerce platforms: Bigcommerce, Magento, and IBM commerce. These platforms are joining launch partners Shopify and Demandware.
The company says it plans to eventually allow businesses to promote Buyable Pins, but currently it is focused on featuring them organically in the home feed, category feeds, search results, recommendations, and Pin boards. It will also be promoting Buyable Pins in The Pinterest Shop, which the company describes as “a destination where you’ll find on trend collections of Buyable Pins and retailer shops, handpicked by us.”
After months of anticipation, Pinterest’s Buyable Pins have finally come to Android. The long-awaited e-commerce feature was launched for iPhone and iPad users back in July, but the service only started rolling out for Android users last week.
