Learn Google Ad Fundamentals

Knowing how advertising works is an important part of the business world. Even if your role does not directly work with the intricacies of advertising, understand what your team might need can make an organization run a little smoother. Google has a great advertising system and a free course to help you maximize your efforts. The course is Google Ad Fundamentals.

Google Ads works for sole proprietorships to the biggest of companies. It can grow with you. It lets you post ads via Google search, YouTube, and the internet at large. It all depends on what your goals are. I completed the course recently, and this is some of what I learned.

The process for Google Ads at its basic levels:

1. Set your goals
2. Think about user attributes:
   1. Keywords
   2. Demographics
   3. Geography
3. Know your budget
4. Create clear and relevant ads
5. Set up some targeting
6. Hope for the best, and go live

This advertising platform has sophisticated targeting, a controllable budget, analytics, and pause features, all which you have active control over.

Where To Post?

Before you can decide where to post, you should choose your ad formats. The formats can affect where the Google network will post your ads. Here is a bit about the Search and Display networks that are part of the Google network as described in the Fundamentals course:

There are nine ad formats which can either show on Search or Display or both.

1. Text ads:
   • Search network
   • Search partner networks
2. Ads with extensions (There is more on this in the next section)
   • Search network
   • Display network (depending on the extension)
3. Shopping ads
   • Google Shopping
   • Search network
   • Search partners (such as YouTube or Image ads)
4. Responsive ads – The benefit to these is they can blend with content.
   • Display network
5. Image ads
   • Display network
   • Search partner networks
6. Video ads
   • They show on the same as Image ads
7. Application Promotion ads
   • Search network
   • Display network
8. Call-only Ads
   • Search network
9. Rich media ads
   • Display network

Effective Text Ads

A great text ad will have a clear headline, uniqueness, a call to action, a link, and if you have a promotion, include it. Make sure you’re aware of some of the keywords you use in your ad they should match your business and your landing page.

Best practices the fundamentals recommends:

• Optimize your headline to factor in mobile devices
• Use ad extensions
• Have a good landing page experience
• Never stop improving the mobile-friendliness of your ad

Basic text ads look like this:

Ad Extensions

The benefit of ad extensions is they provide value by increasing visibility and improving the performance of your ads. Extensions show based on Google’s algorithms for individuals, using up to four extensions per ad. You should set up some (if not all) of the recommended extensions because the algorithms choose which ones show up.

Ideally, the extensions are set up based on goals:

• For all business goals:
  • Site link extension
  • Call out extension
  • Use a structured snippet (more simply, the reason to choose your business over others)
• To get customers to buy from your location:
  • Location extensions
• To encourage customer contacts:
  • Call extensions
  • Message extensions
• Increasing sales:
  • Price extensions
  • Promotion extensions
• Increase app downloads:
  • App extensions

Choose a Campaign Type

You get to choose the format, where, and when your customers will see your ads. The campaigns have settings, for goals, devices, locations, languages, bidding, budgets, and scheduling. Scheduling is great because you can decide the days and times of day that work best to accomplish your business goals.

The campaign types offered by Google Ads are:

1. Search campaign
   • Offers text ads displayed during searches
2. Display campaign
   • Ads are matched to websites and mobile ads
   • The best for awareness
3. Search campaign with Display opt-in
4. Video campaign
   • Great for engagement and brand awareness
5. Shopping campaign
   • Promote sales, new products, and boost traffic
6. Universal App campaign
   • Combines Search, Display, and YouTube ads

Organize Your Account

There is a lot that is going on with ads as described thus far. To ensure you operate efficiently understanding how Google Ads is organized lets you monitor and adjust campaigns easily while keeping information readily available. 

Fundamentals had a nice little graphic to explain this. The account is you, your campaigns are sorted under your account, and each campaign can have ad groups and each ad group has its own keywords and bids.

Depending on the size of your campaigns and accounts you manage, you might want to consider Google Ads Manager.

Connecting with Customers

You need to make sure your ad is getting to your potential customer when they are looking for it. Step one is knowing your target demographics, where you want to find them (i.e. online or physically), and what are the keywords that relate to you. You should also keep in mind what you can do to get visitors to convert, remarketing targeting for previous site visitors with ads featured on sites with related and relevant content.

Keywords are the drivers that connect your customers to you and how Google Ads determines ad placement.

Fundamentals has seven tips for building a great keyword list:

1. Build the list by thinking like your customer and how they might search you, also gather words from your website, brand, and products.
2. Categorize the keywords by themes
3. Target specific customers
4. Mix in some generic keywords
5. Use negative words which will remove your ad from showing when searches are not relevant to your product offering
6. You should have 5-20 keywords. You don’t need to worry about misspellings or pluralization as Ads automatically does this for you.
7. Relate keywords to the apps your customer sees

Match types are what control your ad showing or not. A + modifier is more targeted and can increase the number of clicks you get. “ ” and [ ] is even more targeted and narrowed. A – prevents certain words from causing your ad to show.

Make Your Ads Seen

Your ads will have a rank. The Ad Rank is determined by a few factors:

• Ad format
• Your bids
• Expected clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Landing page experience
• Quality of the ad
• Relevance

The ads auction is what accumulates these factors and decides. First by matching keywords, then eligible results, and finally the ad ranking.

Cost Models

Goals should determine which model to use.

• CPM
  • Cost per impression
  • Price is consistent
  • Goal: Improve awareness
• CPC
  • Cost per click
  • Goal: Increase sales or site traffic
• CPV
  • Cost per view
  • Ad is in video format
  • Goal: Increase video views
• CPA
  • Cost per acquisition
  • Pay only when the desired action occurs such as a sale or sign up
  • Goal: Increase sales
• vCPM
  • CPM, but only pay when visible
  • Goal: Increase brand awareness

Bidding

“Google Ads can bid higher for ads that serve specific business goals (Academy for Ads, 2017).”

Bids are necessary for participation in the ads auction. Bids can be manually done or automatically. The automatic bidding allows you to set daily budgets and Google Ads adjust within your parameters and theirs to get the most clicks and conversions within your daily bidding budget.

Before selecting your bid strategy you will need to know how much a click is worth to you. Tools that Google Ads offers are bid simulators, keyword planners, and first-page bid estimates can help you determine how much a click should be worth to you. First-page bid estimates help you figure out the bid necessary to get on the first page of search results.

Manual bidding strategies are great to start out. But if you are finding that you are getting approximately 15 conversions and 15 clicks per month, automated bidding strategies should be something you should consider. Strategies are:

• Ad clicks
  • Maximizes clicks
• Ad revenue
  • ROAS – return on ad spend
• Ad conversion
  • Enhanced CPC
    • Set keyword bids
  • Maximize conversion
    • Fixed budget
    • No target CPA
  • Target CPA
    • As many conversions as possible
    • Does not operate within a budget

Best practices for automated bidding:

1. Make small changes from manual to auto settings then give the algorithms a chance to learn.
2. Set up conversion tracking
3. Avoid frequent changes to bid options. Same reason a #1.
4. Review performance and make improvements

By letting metrics to accumulate you’re allowing yourself the time to truly understand what is working out. Bids can be adjusted for type of devices used, location, time of day, and interactions. For more advanced users, bids can be adjusted for content, targeting methods, and the use of remarketing lists.

Align Your Budget with Your Goals

Fundamentals recommends you start small with your budget. I would agree that is the best course of action.

How they recommend you calculate a budget:

1. Decide your monthly budget and divide it by 30.4
   • This is a great place to start if you are already working within a monthly budget.
2. Choose a daily budget based on your campaign goals
   • For example, if you want 100 clicks, and each is $0.10, your daily budget is $10.
3. Make use of Google Ads’ recommended budgets
4. Check your ad delivery method
   • Slow burn: consistent throughout the day
   • Accelerated: is…accelerated, you can get faster results, but also risk some lost opportunities

If your goal is to increase traffic, drive conversions, or help to influence your potential customers, you can have more varied sizes of budget. However, if your goal is to develop brand awareness, think bigger budget.

Evaluate Campaign Performance

The Google Ads platform offers customizable dashboards to monitor the metrics and campaigns most critical to you. The reports they offer:

1. Search term
2. Locations
3. Geographics
4. Landing page experience
5. Paid and organic –
6. Attribution – this report shows the paths taken which resulted in conversions

These will let you calculate the return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS) which determines the effectiveness of your advertising campaign. ROI is profits less the costs (of goods and advertising) over costs. ROAS calculates effectiveness without the cost of goods themselves.

Important Editorial and Trademark Reviews

Google Ads’ editorial policy requires ads to be grammatically “correct, clear, and professional”. This includes no emojis, repetitiveness, and unnecessary symbols.

Trademarks must be approved for your ad to show up. If they are not your ad might not be seen. If they are approved but limited, your ad will show in certain cases or disapproved entirely and your ad will not show. The choice you have is to remove the trademark or request authorization to use the trademark. It would also be useful to review the policies of the landing pages or reseller information.

Next Steps

I completed the certificate! It was not a perfect score, nor as high as I wanted, but I completed it. The bonus is after you complete your certificate, the Fundamentals course lets you know where you should review. 

Post Fundamentals course, I feel surer that Google Ads might be the right choice for my future business needs. It will let me start small and grow my advertising. Plus, analytics. I love statistics and they are going to help me gather them, woot.

Reference:

Google Ad Fundamentals. (2017, Sept 22). Academy for Ads. Retrieved from: https://academy.exceedlms.com/student/path/3132-google-ads-fundamentals#

Social Business Success

Bert Verdonck, hosted a very eye-opening video course on Lynda.com, LinkedIn Profiles for Social Business Success. This course focuses on using LinkedIn to succeed in the business of marketing yourself. Lynda.com part of the LinkedIn platform and full of great courses that help you be better in whatever aspect of the world you want to be. Click here for the LinkedIn Profiles for Social Business Success video series.

Verdonck explains some of the key things which people do wrong with LinkedIn. Namely treating LinkedIn like a “billboard instead of a tool (Verdonck, 2017)”. First impressions, headlines, and other little tips from Verdonck make a big impact.

The Essentials

First impressions are a big deal. The importance is to make your LinkedIn profile look good and be found. Most people treat it like a resume, but you shouldn’t. This is the whole billboard versus tool which Verdonck talks about. I am one of those people.

To update your profile from an electronic resume to something with more personality, talk about what you do at your jobs, volunteer work, and your impacts. Celebrate your successes, education, training, anything that proves to the world you are a valuable commodity.

To make yourself more easily found include alternatives names or spellings. Different people may meet you in person and not quite know how to spell your name the way you do. Include any short names that you have or nicknames that you use in business or personal settings.

Your photo should be professional and show some of your personality. Verdonck recommends it be a headshot, with no animals, be current, and be on a clean background. A picture is important because when we see who we are communicating with we are better able to build a connection.

Headlines! I have a terrible headline on my LinkedIn profile. I just never got around to changing it. I really like the ideas the video course presented to avoid the classic, but boring job title and company. Use keywords of what you do, maybe blogs or affiliates you are associated with, and something personal to help, again, build a connection (Verdonck, 2017).

Verdonck’s tips of a stellar headline:

• Show why you
• Explain what you do
• Share what you can
• Have a conversation starter
• Say something thought provoking
• Mention what might you have in common with someone
• Do you have something unexpected, but positive to add?
• Use dividers, such as what is on Verdonck’s LinkedIn profile.

Next is your postal code and location. Be particular about what location you choose. People will be searching for locations in specific areas, make sure you’re tied to the area that makes the most sense to you.

Don’t forget your industry. Verdonck’s advise is to talk to your marketing team about their views. He also mentions you should think about your organization over your area of expertise.

Contact Information

Get a professional email. Avoid the hotmail.com and gmail.com. If you’re wanting to improve your social business, it might be worth a nominal cost as part of setting up your personal brand online.

In your contact information add any social media accounts you have and personal websites. For that matter, any possible way you communicate, such as instant messengers.

Your Summary

The summary section is one I have ignored for a while because I did not know what to put in it. Verdonck has noticed I am not a unique situation, many people do it. He explained what it is for; it is an invitation for the visitor to get to know me.

The summary should begin with your business information or a piece of corporate branding obtained from your organization’s marketing department. Does your organization have any subsidiaries? Try to mention things you don’t want such as sales calls, in a light-hearted way if you can.

Include some getting to know you type stories in your summary. To make your profile more searchable, you should make sure you’re using all the important keywords to you in that summary.

If you have any media, showcase it here.

Your Experience

This section should be about results! Showcase what you have accomplished in your various roles. I feel odd selling myself because I do not want to appear to have a huge ego. Verdonck’s advise it to look at from the perspective of the reader. Talking about your self is telling them what you have to offer to them.

Always keep searchability in mind. If you are talking about things, and there might be different terminology used in different industries, countries, etc., so include them. This allows for more potential traffic for you. If there are any visuals, add them, or create them with platforms such as SlideShare.

Your Brand

Create your brand. I hear this often and there is so much value to it. This is a great place to start building your brand or a new platform for it. Add relevant awards, or interesting ones, patents, certifications, projects, and publish content. Interesting awards can be conversation starters and a humanizing piece of information. If you’re mentioning projects, link to those who worked on the project with you. Make sure they consent before you proceed.

Use a content provider like Embed.ly to showcase your thought leadership without needing to create the content yourself. If you do have your own blog, make sure that you have it added in your contact information or highlighted in your summary. Good content you could create should be based on your favourite tools, expertise, lessons learned, or advice.

Skills & Recommendations

“Social proof is important to back up skills (Verdonck, 2017)”. Choose the skills to add to your profile which you want to be endorsed for. Avoid any buzzwords. If you can get recommendations, request politely, and make sure that request has a personal touch. If they are doing something for you, they need to feel as if you value their opinion. Be ready to offer them a draft they can build from.

Your Education

Verdonck included this quote in his presentation. It is one of my favourites because I strive to always keep learning.

Don’t just mention which schools you went to, but why you chose those educational institutions. Mention all the relevant courses you have taken throughout your career. This can show the visitor you have a history of continuous learning.

Personality

Show your personality and make sure you portray that approachable you with your profile. This is why a video might be helpful. Create a video that is you talking about you. Hearing it from you can help to build that rapport with someone in the digital world.

Talk about your volunteer activities. Learning about someone then allows you to like them and eventually trust them.

Extra Strategies

Keep in mind this profile is about you and not for you.

Search engine optimization is important if you want to be found for things you are interested in. Just avoid keyword density. But mention keywords relevant to your target audience.

This is extreme keyword density:

If that was difficult to read, that is kind of the point. It’s useful for searching but work important words into stories. Stories help to build connections and that is part of the goal here.

Quick tips:

• Follow influential leaders:
  • Specific to your career
  • Interests
  • LinkedIn Influencers
• Manage your profile settings:
  • Add multiple emails you use professionally
  • Make a public profile
  • Make sure your videos are set to NOT autoplay
• Personalize all invitations to connect

Next Steps

Verdonck really got me thinking of my LinkedIn profile in a very different light. I always treated it like a resume. I was always reluctant to follow companies and people and unsure of how to even make my profile more inviting. He recommends coming up with an action plan.

This makes total sense. If you want to create a business, you need a business plan. If you are going to improve the branding that is you, you should start off with a plan. Thinking about actions or insights, what type of outcome you want, who could be of extra help, and create a deadline to keep you accountable.

I have not yet had a chance to get my updates complete. It seems like an overwhelming task, but Verdonck recommends doing daily updates for approximately 15 minutes a day. This will keep you active on the platform.

My first goal will be to improve my headline. It does very little to express what is so great about me. My next action is to rewrite my experience to not be near identical to my resume. I am enthusiastic about the idea of talking about what I loved about the roles and what my successes and strengths from each experience. As a final step to my initial revamp is to create a summary that really encourages conversations.

Verdonck recommends updating your network once the major changes are completed. Then follow up with some feedback from your network. Personal any requests and don’t forget to say thanks!

Reference:

Verdonck, B. (2017, Feb 3). LinkedIn Profiles for Social Business Success. Lynda.com. Retrieved from: https://www.lynda.com/LinkedIn-tutorials/LinkedIn-Profiles-Social-Business-Success/512777-2.htm

 

Marketing Tools: Digital Marketing

Anson Alexander of AnsonAlex.com has decades of experience with digital marketing. I was lucky enough to watch his Lynda.com course that shares some of the tips and tricks that he has learned over the years. It is definitely worth it to have a run through it: Digital Marketing. Lynda.com offers a variety of different types of courses. It is connected to LinkedIn can help you build your own brand much as a business does.

Let’s get started.

Why should you use digital marketing tools? The marketplace is global now, and it is silly to not use them in 2019. There are free and paid options which help you consolidate analytics, social media posting, advertising, and the like. They can save time and reduce the efforts used to calculate return on your marketing spending.

Foundations of Digital Marketing

In the course, Anson breaks down the areas of digital marketing as:

1. Social media
2. Email marketing
3. Display advertising
4. Video marketing
5. Content creation and curation
6. SEO – search engine optimization
7. Affiliate marketing

Quick clear up:

When thinking of social media this more related to boosting an organic type post to a wider audience whereas banner or display ads within social media are not about boosting the audience for a post and focus more on sales.

Anson’s tips for selecting the right digital marketing tools:

• Look for those with proven track records
• Take advantage of free trials to find what works for you
• Look for scalable tools
• Look for tools which can provide you with multiple solutions

Social Media Marketing

Organic social media marketing posts that are focused on building brand awareness and rapport.

Top Platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Snapchat

Social media posts must consider:

• Authenticity
• Relationships
• Content marketing
• Awareness of the time investment of the audience
• Savviness
• Goals, for example:
  • Sales
  • Following
  • Leads

Anson recommends using third-party tools to post consistent brand messages across multiple social media accounts. His picks are Hootsuite and Sprout Social. I have only ever used Hoot, but it is worth it to schedule posts for the future and just having one place to go.

Organic posts are one type of social media marketing. Display advertising and promoted posts which are used to reach bigger and targeted audiences are the other types. Targeting an audience uses your marketing budget for the people who are interested.

Promoting posts is that next level for organic posts. Facebook and Twitter have promoted posts/tweet options. They provide options to be specific about who to target such as location, gender, age, special interest, etc. Facebook lets you set the goal for your promotion. The benefit to promoted posts is to use your best content and getting it in the feeds of those who are not already followers of your brand.

Keep in mind that automation is a good thing. Always find what works for you works for you considering cost, platform, social media accounts, and the features you need to reach your goals.

1. Hoot lets you schedule and amalgamates your social media.
2. Agorapulse has evergreen content revival. You want this for original content that remains valid long after the original posting.
3. Buffer is not as in-depth as Hoot or Agora, but it has some free options.
4. Sprout Social can be expensive, but it is robust and has a built-in CRM system.

Digital Advertising

The main methods of digital marketing are:

1. Display Ads
2. Searches
3. Video
4. Mobile Ads

Knowing your goals in the short and long term is important to choose which methods you want. How do you want to reach your audience? How do you want to market yourself to them?

Content Creation and Curation

You don’t need to be the sole creator of your content. There are tools to help create content and curate content from others.

The top three recommended are:

1. Canva
2. Pixlr Editor
3. GIMP.org

If you’re looking for more professional grade:

1. Adobe Spark
2. Adobe Photo Suite
3. Apple Final Cut Pro

When using curated content make sure you’re giving credit where it is due. The Internet is packed full of content goodness. You might find it when you don’t need it or are not even sure if you need it, but it is relevant it might be worth a save.

Some of the save, find, subscribe to solutions that Anson mentioned are listed below:

• Scoop.it
• Feedly.com
• Pocket
• Pinterest
• Scribble Live
• PearlTrees.com

Email Marketing

This is still a viable source of marketing. Why wouldn’t it be? Email addresses of current and potential customers are available, and it seems reasonable that you would use them.

Some things to consider when venturing into email marketing are:

• The size of your email list
• Lead generation and integration
• Automation
• Ease of use
• Scalability
• Analytical data
• A/B Testing (What is A/B Testing?)

Anson talked about five different tools for email marketing.

1. HubSpot.com
   • Full function email marketing platform
   • Helps with optimization
   • Creation
   • Personalize emails to the customer or lead
2. Constant Contact
   • Robust email marketing platform, but does not have a CRM
   • Personalization
   • Responsive templates that allow for viewing on mobile devices
3. AWeber
   1. Smaller email list options,500, than the others who can start at 1,000
   2. Automation, templates, and lead generation
   3. WordPress integration
4. Active Campaign
   • Full function platform
   • Automation
   • User behaviour-based marketing
   • WordPress integration
5. MailChimp
   • Easy to use and targeted to the small business
   • Great for businesses with active social accounts
   • Shopify integration

Use the free trials and see what works for you. It doesn’t hurt to also do some research about which ones might suit your needs best. As much as free is nice, your time is worth something, save some money up front and read a bit about the tool you want to use before you invest too much time and effort into a free trial for something that does not seem like it will work.

Search Engine Optimization

“SEO is one of the most important pull marketing techniques.”

The free options are:

1. Yoast
   • WordPress integration
2. UberSuggest
   • Shows the ranking of keywords
   • Information about how much advertisers are willing to pay per click
3. Google Keyword Planner
   • Not necessarily geared for SEO, but is a useful tool
   • Primary for advertisers for display ads
   • Lets you reverse engineer your SEO

My favourite free suggestion from Anson was the Google search. Literally. Go to Google and start typing in the search bar. Figure out what shows up for some keywords or phrases you have. It might just suggest some ideas for you or provide you with information about your competitors or customers. I searched sewing in Edmonton, and it comes up with some of the common search terms.

If you find you are getting some great results and your business is growing maybe it is time to think of using a paid service.

• Moz Pro is an all-in-one tool that tracks how your social media is doing, checks backlinks, and shows you your keyword rankings. Moz Pro even suggests new keywords.
• SEMrush is great for learning about your competitors and how well they are doing or not.
• Ahrefs has the second largest database in backlinks. That is second to Google!

Affiliate Marketing

I had to look up exactly what affiliate marketing is before I really understood what we were talking about, as per Wikipedia, it is essentially referral based marketing where you pay a commission for someone marketing on your behalf.

Anson’s tips for choosing an affiliate marketing platform:

• Check out their pay structure. They might be pay per click or pay per action.
• There should be enough tracking features to collect data on your customers and traffic to and from your site.
• A platform with the ability to customize commission gives more flexibility.
• Stick with higher quality affiliates that you trust to market your brand as authentically as possible.
• Mind your reputation.

Wrap Up

I listed a lot of different platforms. Happily, Anson has his all-star list of essential tools:

• Hootsuite for social media
• Google Ad Manager for advertising
• Hubspot for email marketing
• Yoast SEO for SEO
• GIMP for design
• It for curation
• com for affiliate marketing

I wanted to find samples of how these different tools were used by different organizations. There are so many success stories about companies using different tools for achieving their various goals. R. Wood Studio started using MailChimp to help grow their consumer side of their business from mostly business-to-business transactions (MailChimp, n.d.).

Rebecca Wood the owner of R. Wood Studio describes her experience with MailChimp here. She used their data to track preferences and trends to better target their campaigns to those who are most interested in the campaigns. One thing I enjoyed they started was “Love Notes” which were messages without a call to action that shared human interest stories (MailChimp, n.d.).

So much information to digest and use. Now to find the right tools to create, monitor and advertise evergreen content, curated content, and product information.

References:

Anson, A. (2019, Jan 4). Marketing Tools: Digital Marketing. Lynda.com. Retrieved from: https://www.lynda.com/Marketing-tutorials/Marketing-Tools-Digital-Marketing/753915-2.html

Optimize Your Messaging for new Sales Channels. (n.d.). MailChimp.com. Retrieved from: https://mailchimp.com/resources/issue-115-featuring-rwood-studio/

 

Introduction to Content Marketing

Dayna Rothman, Managing Editor of Marketo, provides great information about content marketing and thought leadership in the Content Marketing Foundations course via Lynda.com. You can find it here: video.

What is thought leadership?

There are many avenues that are used to view marketing materials. The key is to be able to cut through the noise of it all, to reach your target audience.

How to do this?

1. Create a content plan
2. Create the content
3. Promote the content
4. Measure for success

Easy enough, right?

A customer, current or prospective, has limited attention. It is a scarce resource that needs to be treated appropriately. One way to accomplish this is through the differentiation process.

To get to be a thought leader, you first must get your content plan created. A definitive guide which is a large content piece, 60+ pages, that can be used in smaller pieces to promote your company, product, and the like.

Defining Content Marketing

The goal of content marketing is to engage the audience with information over a direct, sales-based, marketing approach. Education/information tends to work better than direct marketing, especially in the early stages of a buying process.

Content marketing should be:

• Engaging
• Based on interactions with buyers
• A continuous story
• Appropriate for the channels
• Have a purpose
• Following predefined metrics
• Evergreen

Content marketing improves brand awareness, creates brand preference, and reaches more buyers for less.

Rothman states that, “Typical marketing is renting attention; content marketing is owning the attention.” Education and best practices pull the attention in, whereas sales content only provides product details with the intention to sell.

The 411 Rule is a useful tool, created by Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute to balance between education and sales content.

4 – educations assets, tips

1 – soft promotion – such as an event

1 – hard promotion – such as sales data

Who is going to create the material?

Internal teams consisting of:

• Managing editor
• Associate editor
• Employee contributors
• Subject matter experts
• Content requesters

The external team is usually external writers.

The design team can be internal or external.

The benefit of having a content team is the ability to collaborate, mitigating information silos and duplicate efforts. This is the structure laid out by Rothman in the video:

The Content Service Bureau (CSB) Model helps to provide the framework of how content creation happens.

• Content road maps
• Supports content requests
• Oversees content creation
• Consistency in voice and message
• Scalability
• Streamlines operations
• Reduces duplication

CSB creates:

1. Demand generating content
2. Customer content
3. Brand content

An important step noted by Rothman is the creation of buyer personas and their journeys, to understand who is viewing the content and when certain content is more relevant. Typically, buyers are looking for educational material then product information and finally any promotions.

Brands have personas as well, which set the tone and language in which content will be created. The brand should also follow a style guide that aligns the company, buyer information, grammar guidelines, and the types and structure of content.

Creating Your Content Plan

There is a lot to consider when creating the content plan that will eventually lead to the actual content creation. I promise all these steps are necessary and foundational. There might be more or less, depending on your specific set of circumstances, that you must consider. Rothman’s basic list includes:

• Buyer personas
• Industry trends
• Search engine optimization
• Competitor content
• New markets
• Product launches
• Branding initiative
• Thought leadership
• Medium or channels: blog, infographics, videos, webinars… etc

Creating Your Content

Let’s write content:

First, find a subject matter expert.

Create an outline, draft, review, and draft!

Keep design guidelines in mind.

Content curation is content written by others that is then shared and viewed by your own audience. This helps to keep new content on your channels. You don’t have to be responsible for all of it. Just remember to give credit!

Consider creating a “Big Rock” content asset. You can pull smaller content pieces from it such as creating eBooks of each chapter. Specific information from the Big Rock can also be used to create infographics or slide decks.

Promoting Your Content

The point of marketing is to generate leads and increase revenue. Gating is a great opportunity to cultivate leads and contact information. It can be a form in front of all content or some content, at certain stages of the buying process, or used based on the type of content asset.

If you don’t have a strategy planned, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make sure you have one. The strategy should be aligned with the content and promotion plans, to make the most impact with your marketing campaigns.

Two promotion avenues that Rothman brought up are the use of vendors and influencers. Vendors’ sites or blogs can be used for posting or promoting high value content assets to different audiences. Just make sure you pick the good vendors and have a plan for follow up.

Influencers have a hold of the social media audiences. They can promote or create content for you. Remember gratitude goes a long way.

Measuring Your Content

Measuring content is about seeing a return on your creation investment. Measurement goals can be to increase brand awareness, traffic to the website, increase revenue, or social sharing. It depends on your company’s goals.

Early stage content should be about education and awareness.

Metrics:

Traffic to and from site

Top viewed content asset

Social engagement

Content downloads

Mid to late stage content should be measured for revenue generation.

Metrics:

Lead generation

Sales funnel ending in customer

Opportunity generation either by first touch or multi touch

And then obviously the revenue

What I Learned

Rothman had a lot of really great information to share. The key things I took away from this were:

• Have a good team
• Plan your content
• Create your content (or curate it)
• Promote it
• Pick the measurements that work for your goals, so you know how well you are doing
• Stick to the 411 rule

As a consumer, I really am only interested in what I am interested in. There is a lot, as a marketer, you must do to gain my attention. “Buy this!” does not always work for me. Even the company’s commitments to social responsibility is important to me.

Lately, I have been searching for a good beauty line that is more focused on natural ingredients with less packaging. I have visited the Lush website before, but more recently with different appreciation for its content. Instead of just looking for what products they sell, I decided to learn more about what else they had to offer.

Homepage is a banner of their current promotion. It is nearly Valentine’s Day as of the writing of this. There is a high likelihood someone is going here for a gift for themselves or others. The banner is the right marketing choice for a captive audience, who has a high likelihood of being there to make a special purchase.

By their logo at the top is a link to Stories. Stories is where they house all their resources for products, values, and the Lush lifestyle. For my current needs, this amalgamation of information is great for me figuring out if this company has the right culture to fit what I am looking for.

Thought leadership is setting a course for others to follow. Lush seems to be doing a great job of setting an example through education and tips, generating leads, and furthering their brand awareness. You pulled me in without pushing information in my face. Well done.

Reference:

Pulizzi, J. (2013 June 29). 8 Remarkable (and Stolen) Content Marketing Ideas. Content Marketing Institute. Retrieved from: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/06/remarkable-stolen-content-marketing-ideas/

Rothman, D. (2015 May 7). Content Marketing Foundations. Lynda.com. Retrieved from: https://www.lynda.com/Marketing-Lead-Generation-tutorials/Content-Marketing-Fundamentals-2015/369044-2.html

Social Listening

Martin Waxman hosted a video (vid here) on Lynda.com which is a great rundown of social listening. These are his thoughts on the topic.

Listening is literally paying attention to whatever is making the noise. Specifically, the paying attention part.

Social media is used by significant number of people. Of the 7 billion people on this planet, there are almost 4 billion of those people who have active social media accounts. Each user can have multiple social media accounts, not just having a login for each type of social media but can hold multiple accounts in each.

I am one of those people. I felt the need to categorize my social media to speak to specific groups of followers and like-minded people. But that is a whole other thing I should post about too. It is a bit targeting listening and knowing your audience.

People talk about what they do, what they are planning, and the good and bad of their interactions with the world and companies. Listening by monitoring social media accounts is a great addition to the aspects of business intelligence. Paying attention to social media should be part of any company’s marketing strategy.

Social listening is not only for listening to customer complaints, but it is also for checking in with:

• All customer feedback, positive and negative
• Employees
• Media and influencers
• Competitors

The biggest thing is to listen to the people, ask them questions, but let them finish their thoughts. Always try to repeat back your understanding of their comments or questions just to make sure you are on the same page as they are.

Develop a Strategic Approach

Waxman points out the goal of social listening:

Keeping the company top of mind for current and potential customers.

Listening is about being quiet. This seems like a very obvious statement, but as Waxman points out, we are all eager to be heard, so actively listening to someone and really hearing what they are saying is not always easy.

As per Willian Ury, listening helps us understand, connect, and to get to yes. Ury’s Tedx Talks about listening was really inciteful for me and a great reminder of the power of listening. It is 15 minutes and worth it: The Power of Listening.

How to listen better?

Waxman’s tips for listening better:

Keep an ear open for curiosity

Ask questions about what is said

Let the speaker finish

Repeat back

By listening to the customer, don’t act like a direct marketer, but someone who seems more genuinely concerned about issues or graciously accepting of positive feedback. These acts “engender customer loyalty.”

What to listen to?

• Hashtags
• Keywords
• Geography

Geography is more of a categorization, then a thing to listen for. Geography can be defined by not just countries, or cities, but also areas where certain feedback is more prevalent.

How to Get Started

According to the video “93% of online activities begin with a search”. That is a significant number, but that aligns with how I often begin my hunt for information online. Either through search engines like Google, or Bing, but also searching social media accounts for the business. Multiple tools are important since differing algorithms are used. It all depends on what type of information I am looking for.

There are many tools out there for social monitoring. Waxman talks a lot about Hootsuite. This a dashboard that I have been using for years now. It is a nice tool for managing multiple social media accounts. I have been using it for really basic needs, namely the amalgamation of social media. Plus, scheduling posts.

Key Terms:

1. Tabs are top level
2. Streams are the columns within Tabs

This is a sample from the video:

What I really liked was being shown what more I can do with Hoot. Adding Tabs for me has just been one account per tab showing all the direct messages, the news feed, and mentions. Adding different Streams within Tabs for searches, keywords, and lists is next level in social listening. These are definitely things I want to add to Hoot use.

Search options for the streams can be specific to:

• Periods of time
• Reviewing for sentiment
• Keywords and phrases
• Demographics
• Geography

Listening provides marketers with data that, if judged appropriately, can help the business solve and anticipate for their customers, current or potential.

Social Listening in Action

Waxman reminds us that social listening requires:

• Hands on, not hands off – this process is not set it and forget it

Take action quickly, be genuine in your actions and responses

• Good observation skills are required

What are the new things that I should be paying attention to?

Is the feedback consistent in anyway?

What are there any local influencers who can help build the brand?

• Keen judgment – use all you know, talk to colleagues, compile data

Social listening is a proactive way to handle problems, address concerns, and if possible, prevent an issue from becoming a crisis.

Assisting customers publicly on social media can benefit not just the direct customer, but others who also share the same issue. It can build loyalty to the brand. Customer service is a big deal. Though there are times when it is necessary to take the discussion offline. Specifically, if you’re dealing with confidential information or complex problems.

We are all customers so the adage of treat others how you wish to be treated should always be top of mind when dealing with customers. By paying attention to what everyone is saying there is a much bigger chance for success.

Final thoughts?

Social listening is customer service and customer service is important (I say this often) in this highly competitive, constantly changing global market. A local company can sell internationally, and people locally can choose to buy internationally. One of the best ways to differentiate yourself from competitors is by focusing on having great customer service. Competing on price for some goods is just not feasible.

Know your customers, listen to their needs, solve problems they don’t even know they have, and anticipate their wants. Though I don’t have my own business, yet, I know how I talk to businesses online matters. I know how I want to be talked to by them in turn. I respect companies that respond to mentions of their business, positive or negative. It makes me feel like they genuinely care about my feedback.

Listening builds brand loyalty.

It doesn’t take much to find all the ways the companies have gone wrong online. Those are obvious lessons.

But brand loyalty keeps the revenue streams moving inwards. Just take a look at the Wendy’s Twitter feed. The mentions have fun conversations and attempts to solve problems. Plus, it is pretty entertaining.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to even handle some basic listening. Use the tools that work for you. Social media is an easy way to have conversations with the market. Why not use the tools at your fingertips?

References:

Waxman, M. (2017 June 06). Learn Social Media Monitoring. Lynda.com. Retrieved from: https://www.lynda.com/HootSuite-tutorials/Social-Listening-Marketers/546104-2.html

Learn a Thing! – Writing Marketing Copy

Writing Marketing Copy

I am no marketer, accounting is my world, but learning how to properly present yourself, your business, or your employer’s business is essential.

“Learning to Write Marketing Copy” was a very useful video (to watch: click here) from Lynda.com that helped me get a better idea of the basics of marketing copywriting. Hosted by Ian Lurie. It describes some of the key basics of marketing copywriting. This video is useful for not only those with aspirations to work in the marketing industry, but also for those whose professional lives need marketing copywriting.

Overview of Marketing Copywriting

Marketing copywriting is intended to create marketing for a good or service, specifically speaking to those who want the product which is for sale. Marketing copy should increase brand awareness, show value, and provide a call to action. Marketing copy is part of the strategy for an organization, not just a means to increase sales.

The elements of marketing copy include:

• Words
• Something for attention
• Visuals
• A handshake

Lurie describe the handshake as the initial hello, or the follow up after a sales call. This handshake should reaffirm that this product that I am selling to you is what you need.

Copy must have a call to action. It is the call to action that provides the value for the time investment of the audience.

Classifications of marketing copy:

1. By collateral, in the form of:
   • Brochures
   • Direct marketing
   • The poster
   • The script
   • One-liner
   • Product descriptions
2. By medium
   • Online
   • Print
   • Radio
3. By style
   • Teaching
   • Straight shot
   • Laughter
   • Scare tactic
   • Hard sell

Understanding how the copy will be used, and the nuances of target audience, make the choices easier to sort out.

Writing Marketing Copy

Writing starts with a plan. Lurie stressed the idea of gathering materials then getting settled and writing undisturbed for fixed periods of time. A plan isn’t necessary before the writing, but it is a good place to start.

General rules:

1. Address your reader
2. Understand your customer is a human
3. Don’t use sarcasm
4. Let the reader know why they need what you have
5. Be direct

People are short on time, so they want any marketing copy they encounter to get to the point. Headlines are useful here. Headlines are to the point, i.e. no mystery, no sarcasm, and do not use fear mongering. The best way to get a good headline is to just write as many as you can think of. Then test the best!

Testing via direct mail, or testing Internet headlines, involves sending headlines to segments and seeing how they respond. Internet headlines are easier to test since they are not limited to types of response that direct mail testing would provide. With the use of ads, emails, landing pages, and just asking those who view it, there is more chance for response and creation of data.

Because readers view images, then headlines, and finally the rest of the page, typography is important. Layout standards are typically:

• In print
  • 5-6 lines per paragraph
  • 15-20 words per line
  • 1.6x the space between paragraphs and line
• Online:
  • 5-6 lines per paragraph
  • 13 words per line
  • 3-4 paragraphs without a subheading or image

The Golden Rule is 15-20 words per page, with the 1.6x spacing. However, there are Golden Rule calculators that are useful, such as this one: GRT Calculator.

Rewriting Existing Copy

Rewriting is important because it allows someone else’s eyes to view what you might not see after long periods of time looking at the same words. The keys to rewriting are simple:

1. Don’t restructure the copy; find improvements
2. Ask for the context of the copy
3. Read the copy for good structure
   • Change passive voice to active – use you and your
   • Proofread
   • Remove any unnecessary words

My favourite tip from Lurie was to read the copy forwards for punctuation and grammar then backwards for spelling.

Now What?

Get your brain moving.

Write

Edit

Proofread

Layout

These are the basic steps to writing marketing copy.

Lurie stated that marketing is half art, half science. Refining the art of marketing comes with practice and the through the study of marketing data; the skills of marketing professionals just get better.

Lurie has provided me with a much bigger appreciation for writing marketing copy. I always understood that creative people were necessary, but never really understood the formulas which “just work”. The creative aspect lets the writer break the “rules” too. The copy should be effective, and if that means breaking some traditional grammar or typography rules that is ok. It all depends on the collateral, medium, style, and channels being used.

Calder Bateman (website here) is an Edmonton based marketing and PR firm. Their main page just talks to you. Social media marketing is conversational, as is much of the webpages. The first section of their homepage, following an initial image ribbon, is the headline: Calder Bateman asks bigger questions. This headline makes me want to move forward. What are these bigger questions? Their style of short, simple idea sentences is easy to read, and provides me with information about what they can do for me, namely that value creation factor.

I enjoy the visuals for the Hot Dame (website here)! They are based in Beaumont. The main page opens up with their logo and a big banner with an image. Currently they are promoting their bamboo line.

Striking image. Coupled with a list of reasons why you should buy their things. Scroll down and you get a small sample of what’s waiting on the next pages. Closed off with their Instagram account and some basic housekeeping items. Social Media connections, FAQs, mailing list subscriptions and the like. It is an easy to view layout is exactly what I am looking for when I am shopping.

Lurie’s insights have changed my perception, perspective, and appreciation for marketing copywriting.

References:

Lurie, I. (2014, May 30). Learning to Write Marketing Copy. Lynda.com. Retrieved from: https://www.lynda.com/Business-Online-Marketing-tutorials/Writing-Marketing-Copy/149250-2.html

Companies:

Calder Bateman. Website: http://calderbateman.com/

Hot Dame. Website: https://hotdame.ca/

Welcome.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

This blog began as an assignment. I did well in the class so I am a little proud of it.