Have you ever been to a public auction or estate sale? I’ve done it and it is a lot of fun. You find the item you want, the auctioneer starts the bidding process, and you start to bid. The bidding goes back and forth until someone is the high bidder and takes home the prize. 

At a public auction, the bidding process may take a few minutes. But in the digital age, the bidding can take a fraction of a second. 

What is programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising is the process of using technology to automate the buying and selling of online advertising. It is a real-time buying process of ads, and it is extremely effective.

With advancements in the online ad-buying process, small and mid-size businesses (SMB)s now have access to tools that give them the ability to harness the power of data and apply it systematically to increase conversions from online ads.

How are small and mid-size businesses are using programmatic advertising?

To help answer that question, Ascend2 and Perfect Audience joined together to field a survey and published the findings in a report titled The State of Programmatic Advertising from the Small and Mid-Size Business Perspective. The survey was fielded in June 2020 and a total of 213 marketing professionals from businesses with fewer than 500 employees participated in the survey. 

Here are a few noteworthy findings from the research study and some practical strategies and tips on how to apply the research to influence your marketing programs.

#1: Programmatic Advertising Budgets Are Increasing

Programmatic advertising can stretch often limited ad budgets further than traditional options. Despite uncertainty across many industries, about two-thirds (65%) of marketers report expecting an increase in budget for programmatic advertising in the months ahead. 

Quick Tip from the Research: Programmatic advertising is based on real-time bidding, allowing for a faster, more efficient, and less expensive advertising experience. Given the built-in benefits of programmatic, it isn’t surprising that budgets are increasing when most marketing budgets are decreasing during the COVID-19 economic crisis. 

#2: Start Your Programmatic Advertising Program with the End in Mind

What are the primary objectives of your programmatic advertising program? 

For results-driven small and mid-size businesses, a well-executed programmatic advertising program provides a channel for increasing their bottom line with maximum efficiency. Driving sales and generating leads are top priorities when executing an online ad-buying program for 57% and 48% of SMB marketers surveyed, respectively. 

Quick Tip from the Research: When determining your primary objectives, you must define the purpose of your campaign. Campaigns should have a single objective (drive sales, generate leads, brand awareness), and each objective requires a specific strategy. Each program requires a unique ad set, landing page, call-to-action, and metrics to measure success. 

#3: Programmatic Advertising Is Challenging (but worth it)

Serving the right ad, to the right person, at the right time requires an enormous amount of data, tracking, and technology. That is why 46% of small and mid-size businesses report that audience targeting is a top challenge when it comes to programmatic advertising. Allocating enough budget to execute their strategy is also an obstacle for 37% of those surveyed.

Quick Tip from the Research: Follow the ROI and data to find your best audience to target. Did you know that with Facebook and Google you can only reach half of your audience? 

Programmatic advertising platforms will help you reach the other half of your audience. The webinar, Retargeting Beyond Facebook and Google, provides additional information on how to reach a larger target audience. 

#4: Audience Targeting is the Most Effective Tactic for a Programatic Advertising Program

A powerful targeting solution is critical to the success of a programmatic advertising strategy. Audience targeting is considered the most effective tactic for a programmatic advertising program to a 72% majority of small and mid-size business marketers. Keyword targeting is also a tactic that 40% of those surveyed have experienced success with.

Quick Tips from the Research: Don’t overlook the success of retargeting. The average CTR for retargeting ads is 0.7% compared to 0.007% for display ads. Retargeting is serving ads to customers after they leave your website. It allows you to show your visitors relevant ads when they visit other sites. 

Here are a few of the benefits of retargeting:

Higher brand lift: Four weeks after implementing a retargeting campaign, marketers found an average increase of 1046% in searches for branded terms. The performance was more than twice as effective as audience targeting without retargeting.
Improved click-through and conversion rates: Three out of five viewers notice and consider ads they’ve previously seen at another source (eMarketer). Retargeting has a click-through rate that’s 10 times higher than a typical ad (Wishpond). Visitors who are retargeted are also 43% more likely to convert than those who aren’t. (Criteo) 
Better value for money than other advertising methods: 91% of marketers who’ve used retargeting find it to perform same or better than search, email or display (IAB)

91% of marketers who’ve used retargeting find it to perform same or better than search, email or display
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#5: Return on Investment (ROI) Is the Most Important Metric of a Programmatic Advertising Prorgram

Measuring the impact of advertising campaigns is critical to optimizing a programmatic strategy. Return on Investing (ROI) and Return of Ad Spend (ROAS) is the most meaningful metrics for tracking success according to 58% and 36% of those marketers working with businesses with up to 500 employees. 

QUICK TIP from the Research: What is the difference between ROI and ROAS? ROAS is a subset of ROI and tells you if an ad campaign is working. ROI tells you if your entire program or department is profitable. Here is a video that provides more detail on the differences between ROI and ROAS (start at minute 2:55 of the video). 

Here is a link to the entire report, The State of Programmatic Advertising from the Small and Mid-Size Business Perspective. 

The post Programmatic Advertising: What It Is and Tips to Get Started appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Are you obsessed with creating great content?

I hope not.

Today, that’s a horrible approach to content creation.

Why?

Great is such a vague descriptor that it’s useless.You’re biased.You don’t get to decide if something’s great – your readers do.

Anyone who’s been at this for a while knows the bone-numbing horror of hitting the publish button on what they think is their greatest content ever, only to have it savaged by readers.

Or worse, ignored by people and search engines alike.

Nowadays, great content fails miserably for one big reason: you’re not really giving people a reason to visit your site and read your content.

“Great” content isn’t a great thing to create anymore.

So, what should we be creating instead?

Read on to discover the answer to that question.

If Everyone Is Creating Great Content…

For a long time, content creators and SEO blogs advised that the best possible thing you can do to improve your position in the SERPs was to create “great” content.

For a long time, that was fantastic advice.

If you’re up to speed with your internet history, you know that Google was once flooded with low-quality, thin content aimed at ranking well rather than providing any actual value to readers.

Even Google recommended it in its content guides.

Thanks to efforts by Google, though, to punish bad content and reward great content, great content now is no longer a rarity.

Plus, there is also a growing awareness that high-quality, customer-focused content really does deliver better in the long run.

(Not that I’m complaining. Believe me, we’re better off for it.)

However, in 2020, that creates a bit of a conundrum for content creators.

According to Worldometers, there will be 800,000+ blog posts published today. (You can watch the ticker for yourself.)

Sure, not all of them will be great, but even if a quarter of them are, that’s just over 200,000 other blog posts today drowning out yours in the sea of greatness.

In other words, great is the new mediocre.

And nobody ever seized a competitive advantage by being merely average.

So, what do you do in such a situation?

Simple:

You need greater content.

Greater content isn’t just catchy, well-written blog posts with an attitude.

It’s 2020, and we know exactly what Google (and our readers) expect.

Consider these 10 ways to step beyond mere greatness in your content.

1. Accurate Content

In the era of misinformation, make sure you’re standing out for the right reasons.

You slave away at that blog post for hours or days but it’ll do nothing for you if it gets flagged on social media for misinformation.

Worse, inaccurate content will destroy your credibility in your industry, especially if your competitors notice.

How do we make content as accurate as possible? There are two easy and vital things you can do:

Check your facts. Whether it’s stats, claims, or quotes, always check your facts. FactCheck is great at this, as is Snopes.Revisit old content. Just because something’s true now doesn’t mean it’ll be true in a few years. Things change all the time, so keep your content updated.

2. Comprehensive Content

Google – and readers – like comprehensive content.

That’s content that answers every question they have (and questions they didn’t realize they had) conveniently in the same place.

According to HubSpot, the ideal post for SEO ranges between 2,100 and 2,400 words – which takes about 7 to 8 minutes for an average adult to read.

Our own survey suggested that between 1,000 and 2,000 words was the best length.

Seem like a big range? It is.

That’s because comprehensive content doesn’t mean long content.

It’s a mistake to focus on achieving some magical word count beyond what your competitors have in a misguided attempt to outrank them.

People don’t want tangents.

They don’t want to read about the biography of your grandma’s best friend’s nephew’s boss’s golden retriever before you give them the recipe.

Let your content dictate the length, not the other way around.

3. Credible Content

Are you serving expert, authoritative, and trustworthy content?

If so, Google will notice and so will your readers.

The concept of E-A-T (which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is mentioned 135 times in the Google Search Quality Guidelines.

If you’re in a niche that “impacts the future happiness, wealth, or health of users,” you’ll need to do even better than that and meet Google’s expectations for a level they call Y-M-Y-L, Your Money or Your Life.

Credibility involves your demonstrated expertise on a topic.

Simply put, are you a qualified expert on this topic?

Or if you’re not writing the content (which is common and even recommended if you’re not a writer), is the person or author publishing on your blog a qualified expert?

The expertise and value of the content and its author is something quality evaluators are trained to check for, so make it easy by making the information available.

There are a few ways that you can signal the author’s credibility on a topic.

I recommend creating author bios for your content creators that include:

The author’s picture.Links to social media handles.Mentions of awards and accomplishments.Areas of focus and years of experience.

4. Engaging Content

Here’s another adjective that gets thrown around a lot: engaging.

In the world of online writing, it doesn’t just mean snappy and humorous albeit shallow one-liners.

Some writing gurus will tell you to write with an attitude, but really, engaging has a different definition when it comes to content:

Engaging content is content that makes acting on the information so effortless that your readers do so without a second thought.

That might be a social media share, a visit to your retail location, or a subscription signup.

And much of that is technical rather than literary.

To make your content more engaging:

Use headers. They break your content up by idea and make it easier to skim.Convey information with images. I like this technique for illustrating concepts or pointing out statistics. No one wants to read strings of numbers, but infographics are addicting.Keep it short and simple. Short sentences, short paragraphs, short explanations that drive home the point.Use bullets. Like this one – you can skim the bold text to get the main idea, or you can read the whole thing.Reduce barriers to the next step in the funnel. Make the CTA clear, place the social media buttons prominently, add a signup box right there on the page.

5. Informative Content

Your readers came to you for information – so give it to them!

Each piece of content you produce should teach them something.

Make your content as informative as possible by:

Crafting a specific, descriptive headline that tells your readers exactly what they’re getting.Provide the answer they’re looking for upfront, then go into detail.Answer the question they have directly – don’t dance around the topic.

6. Specific Content

Sometimes, the best content is the content that’s short and precise.

A reader has a specific question, and they need a specific answer.

In that case, you’ll do better in the SERPs if you’re able to provide the answer more specifically than your competition.

Content types that benefit from being ultra-specific (rather than super long) include:

7. Unique Content

Imitation might be a sincere form of flattery, but it won’t help you rank better than your competitors.

It could hurt you, especially if your efforts to copycat your rivals don’t quite pan out.

Instead, opt for unique content. If you’re struggling with that:

Turn to your brand. What is your unique voice, style, angle?Identify your USP. What do you offer that your competitors don’t?Original research. What insights can you offer from your own industry experience?

8. Useful Content

Google likes the word useful.

In their mission statement, they use it four times – the only other word they use more frequently is relevant.

To create useful content, think in terms of utility.

You should always strive to answer the question, “what purpose does this content serve?”

If you can’t answer that, you don’t need to create it.

9. Valuable Content

At the core of content marketing lies valuable content – it’s you delivering content that enriches the lives of your readers without them needing to give you anything in return.

Creating content that your readers find valuable is one way for you to demonstrate that you care about them and their well-being.

Valuable content can take many forms.

In general, content is valuable if it:

Solves a problem (not just advertising how your product solves a problem).Teaches a skill.Saves your reader time or money.Provides knowledge or insight.Gives your reader resources.

Always ask yourself: how does this content make my readers’ lives better?

If you can’t answer that, go back to the drawing board, and think about what you can add so that it does.

10. High-Quality Content

If you’ve hit all nine sections, then you’ll have high-quality content.

But just in case, let’s circle back to Google’s definition of “high-quality” for just a moment.

When it comes to quality, Google takes into consideration more than just the actual writing on your pages.

The search engine considers your site’s design and technical aspects.

It’s also interested in knowing that:

The information your visitors are looking for is displayed clearly, especially on the home page.Other sites link back to yours.Your site is accessible, with a logical link structure and mobile compatibility.You’re using alt text on images.Your content is unique to each page, not copy-pasted across several.

Takeaway: Go Greater or Go Home

Great content is boring.

Today, you should be creating greater content – content that informs, excites, and enriches the lives of your readers.

Remember that it doesn’t have to be 10 times or 100 times better than your competitors’.

It doesn’t even have to follow the so-called skyscraper technique.

It just needs to step beyond what’s already out there, even if it’s by an inch.

Go forth, create greater content and your brand will thrive.

More Resources:

Image Credits

All screenshots taken by author, August 2020

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

When it comes to the metrics by which you measure business growth, Customer/Client Lifetime Value (CLV) is king – but only given the right context.

Increasing CLV in your content marketing business isn’t about taking more from each customer or simply selling them on additional services.

It’s all about delivering the best possible service by meeting more of each customer’s needs.

This important growth KPI is the natural byproduct of your ability to anticipate client needs and offer solutions that help grow their business.

This is especially important now since 54% of SEOs have reported marketing budget cuts due to COVID-19, as per Moz’s most recent State of Local SEO report.

Winning new business becomes even more difficult in times of economic turbulence.

This may be just the right time to focus on helping your existing client base weather the storm and come out stronger, thanks to the enhanced services you can provide.

Be flexible – you may need to adjust your contract to focus on higher-impact opportunities and quicker wins.

There’s no point holding a client to services that no longer meet their needs due to circumstances beyond their control.

When you prove that these value-add services are worthy via increased revenue for existing clients, it’s a win all around.

You increase their lifetime value to your business and they have the budget to keep you on in theirs.

Check out these options and think about the opportunities they could create for your clients – and your business.

1. Email Marketing

The Coronavirus pandemic caused a massive upheaval in consumer behavior, with brand loyalty one of the greatest casualties.

Over 60% of consumers changed their shopping behavior due to COVID-19, most often for convenience and value.

Email is crucial for reengaging and staying in front of loyal customers.

But each communication must add value to that person’s life and speak directly to their needs.

Your client probably already has an email strategy, but it doesn’t hurt to offer extra support given the circumstances.

They may need to increase the frequency of their communications, or perform more testing to see how copy lands now that the market has shifted.

2. Social Graphics

It makes good business sense to help your clients get the most from their content creation investments.

If you’re already blogging, offer to add 4 or 5 social graphics for each blog post; these could be “quote cards” that call out expert insight, or minigraphics that highlight statistics from the piece.

Include these in the blog post itself for visual interest, to break up dense text, and to add lots of descriptive alt text for search engines and readers with differing abilities.

Use Canva to get started, or use a VA to save yourself some time while adding new, scalable revenue.

That was easy.

3. Market Research

Many different types of companies have had to add new products/services or even completely transform the way they serve customers and clients in light of COVID-19.

Your clients’ customers may be completely different than the market they were in just one year ago.

SEO professionals and content creators are prolific researchers.

How can you package that inherent knowledge and put it to work for your clients?

It could be that you make yourself available on an hourly basis to do market research and create new customer personas.

Or, you could offer this as a packaged service and give your existing clients a substantial discount.

Either way, this is a service all kinds of companies need right now whether they’re doing it in-house or outsourcing.

4. Keyword Research

Similarly, your clients’ keywords may be out of date.

They may be dealing with entirely different competitors now, especially if their primary business category has changed.

Think: a transition from dine-in restaurant to prepackaged pickup meals service, or pivoting from arts and crafts supply store to online classes with home-delivered supply kits.

Their target customers’ intent and motivations could be entirely different now.

Consider offering keyword research as an add-on to your next month’s package.

5. Google Posts

Help local businesses improve their visibility in Maps and organic searches with local intent.

Google wants to see that businesses are actively managing their local presence and Google Posts are a great way to regularly put out news, offers, photos, and other engaging information.

Repurpose content you’re already producing for the client’s blog or social media and include Posts as a weekly or twice weekly add-on to your package.

6. Review Management

Depending on your clients’ business, they may experience an influx of online reviews at different stages of lockdown, reopening, and operating under various public health recommendations.

Some businesses may have lost key staff who used to handle review responses.

Check in with your clients and see how they’re doing at reviews management.

Make sure they understand the importance of reviews not only as an extension of their customer service channel but also as a powerful conversion agent and local ranking factor.

If you know the company well, you could offer to assist with review response.

Or, your client might have people to do this in-house but need their review response templates and flagging/escalation policies updated in keeping with new social distancing guidelines, PPE, and sanitization practices, etc.

7. Crisis Communications

Every company should have a crisis communications plan.

It is critically important that companies are proactively communicating important service updates regularly.

Customers and employees alike want to know what’s going on inside the companies with whom they do business.

They need reassurance and stability and if your clients aren’t putting the truth about their situation out into the universe, it leaves the door open for speculation and rumor.

Offer your hourly rate at a discount for existing clients to craft any important media releases and repurpose into blog posts, Google Posts, social content, and emails to keep customers and employees informed and engaged.

Let your client companies’ executive team know you’re at their disposal.

8. UX Testing

Companies that had to adapt and reinvent themselves quickly may be staring back at a mess of new blog posts, landing pages, informational or product pages, and more created during the height of their crisis.

Offer to go over the content created over the last six months with an eye to user experience, internal linking, content that needs updated, etc.

Again, this may or may not be needed but if clients don’t know this is within your wheelhouse and capabilities, they won’t likely offer you the opportunity.

(And surely you’ll do a more thorough job for them than Jamie the accountant’s son Simon who’s doing online learning from home and needed something productive to do.)

9. Documentation

A lot may have changed for your client companies.

Internal and public-facing policies, workflows, and procedures, entire product and service lines may be new or different.

If your client did have in-house resources for creating and updating documentation, they may be stretched to their max right now.

Do you have the capacity to offer your services?

It could be that you interview in-house team members and go from there.

Or, you could have VAs transcribe voice notes or instruction and work from that.

10. Remote Teams Support

When the lockdown first hit and entire teams had to go remote, it was all about getting people connected and figuring out the technical glitches.

Today, most employees know how to use Zoom but the challenges in remote work are becoming more complex.

Zoom fatigue is real.

Work-life balance has become increasingly difficult and may be contributing to even greater gender inequality in the remote work environment.

Your client companies may need assistance with collaborative work events, such as:

Planning and hosting more engaging social events.Training sessions.Skills shares.Brainstorms,.Co-workings.

If this is an area of strength, consider offering professional remote events facilitation as a service to support your client teams as they continue to figure out the most effective ways to work remotely.

Basically, you want to find opportunities where your client needs and your transferable skills intersect.

Run these new service offerings through a bit of a litmus test:

Is this something my clients would benefit from?Does it make sense alongside the other services we offer?Is it necessary and helpful?Do we have the talent and resources to do this right?Is someone else already doing this really well and if so, is there an opportunity to partner?

Author’s note: I have intentionally withheld Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training/consulting from this list.

Yes, it is needed now more than ever before, and desperately so in many companies.

However, it is my personal belief that unless you have the lived and professional experience and education to make you a legit DEI expert, you have no business selling it as a service.

If you’re just starting out on your learning journey and want to be a better ally, start by following and listening to Brigette Hyacinth, Madison Butler, Kike Oniwinde, Geraldine Cochran, or any/all of the other talented black professionals generously sharing their experience and insights for our benefit in social channels.

More Resources:

Image Credits

Featured & In-Post Images: Created by author, September 2020

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

10 Ways Content Marketers & SEO Pros Can Boost Client Lifetime Value Right Now via @mirandalmwrites

Since the dawn of COVID-19, brick-and-mortar retail has been thrust into yet another level of disruption. From e-commerce to mobile to social media to apps to a global pandemic, retail can’t seem to catch a break. But now, maybe they can.

Consumers are now, not only increasingly digital first, they’re bound by a somatic marker that is COVID-19. The future of retail isn’t what it used to be.

In this 50 minute, yes, almost one hour, conversation with Alicia Esposito of Retail Touchpoints, we explore known and unknown dynamics at play for retailers in what I’m calling the “Novel Economy.” If you care about the future of retail and the evolution of consumerism, I promise this is worth your time. It’s definitely not for those with limited spans of time looking for the “top 10” list of platitudes. It is for the real change agents aiming to build the future…today.

It’s thoughtful, honest and raw, and it dives into the areas of opportunities retailers can use to survive and thrive beyond the next normal.

In March 2020, Brian Solis began his tenure as Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. Brian has built a career around studying humans, technology and how their intersection impacts businesses and humanity overall. Little did he know that he would begin his new role during one of the most disruptive happenings in decades. During this special episode of Retail Remix, Brian and Alicia talk about how these developments inspired the creation of the Novel Economy, and how our mindsets, lifestyles and behaviors during this time will serve as a catalyst for our future.

 

 

 

 

The post The Future of Retail: Inspiring Innovation In The Novel Economy appeared first on Brian Solis.