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Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
I spent entirely too much time deciding on how to open this post. Should I try to cram a Dune gag about pumpkin spice in there somewhere? A little dated, maybe. How about a poetic observation of autumn’s natural beauty? Probably not. Maybe something about the highly civilized, not-at-all-distasteful U.S. presidential election?
Hell no.
I’m sure I’m not alone in my shock that it’s nearly October already. While September may have flown by in the blink of a proverbial eye, it was a very busy month here at the WordStream blog. Today, for your reading pleasure, we’ll be taking a look at the top stories from September, so kick back, sip your pumpkin spice latte (sorry), and enjoy the most popular posts of the month.
1. NEW in AdWords: Demographic Targeting for Search Campaigns
When Google announced that the kind of demographic targeting options that display advertisers have enjoyed for some time would be coming to search campaigns in AdWords, marketers were understandably excited. Check out everything you need to know about these awesome new targeting options in our most popular post of September, courtesy of Mark Irvine.
2. 5 Insights from Analyzing Half a Billion Dollars in Ad Spend [New Data]
Half a billion dollars is a lot of money. So much, in fact, that you could buy New York City’s most expensive condo – a four-floor, 11,000 square-foot quadruplex at 220 Central Park South worth $250 million – twice.
Half a billion dollars is also how much advertising spend WordStream has analyzed with its AdWords Performance Grader (which recently celebrated its 1 millionth report!), so Larry Kim dove deep into the data to find out exactly what that ad spend could tell us.
Packed with original data, visuals, and research, this is essential reading for AdWords advertisers.
3. 10 Dos and Don’ts for Sitelink Extensions
In Erin’s words, sitelink extensions are “the king of all AdWords extensions.” They’re so powerful, that in Google’s estimation, they can lift click-through rates by as much as 10-20% – and even as much as 50% on branded searches.
However, as powerful and versatile as sitelink extensions can be, there are several things that you, the advertiser, have to do in order to see that kind of improvement. Find out exactly what you should – and shouldn’t – be doing with sitelink extensions in this post by Erin.
4. The Complete, Digestible Guide to AdWords Budgets
AdWords budgeting certainly isn’t the sexiest topic in PPC, but it’s among the most important. The more effectively you plan and execute upon your AdWords budget, the greater the potential return. However, knowing precisely where and how to get started with AdWords budgeting can be intimidating.
Fear not, loyal reader, as Allen Finn has got your back. In this comprehensive but accessible guide, Allen walks you through everything you need to know about how to plan and maintain a solid AdWords budget.
5. 5 Big New Social Media Marketing Trends
Keeping up with what’s going on in social media can be a full-time job, and even experienced digital marketers often find themselves overwhelmed trying to keep up. This can result in missed opportunities to engage with your audiences in new ways, and in our fifth-most popular post of September, Margot examines five of the latest and hottest trends in social media.
6. 7 Things I Still Hate About LinkedIn Ads
We all had a good giggle when, shortly after writing about how much he hated LinkedIn Ads more than a year ago, Larry received an invitation to visit LinkedIn to chat. Despite suspecting the ominous undertones of the invitation (not really), Larry did indeed visit LinkedIn to talk about the social network’s ad platform.
Unfortunately, Larry still doesn’t like LinkedIn Ads. In this follow-up post, Larry explains exactly what he thinks about the service and highlights the persistent shortcomings of LinkedIn Ads as an ad platform – shortcomings that could be transformed into lucrative opportunities if they were implemented.
Presumably Larry will be heading off to beautiful Mountain View, California, again at some point in the near future.
7. 7 PPC Trends to Stay Ahead of the Curve in 2016 & Beyond
It’s never too soon to start thinking about how the (frequent, constant, overwhelming) changes in PPC could affect your campaigns, especially as we move into fall. In this guest post, Nancy Kapoor explores seven PPC trends you should be aware of to keep up with the competition for the rest of this year and into 2017.
8. Bing Expanded Text Ads: 5 Things You Need to Know
As many PPC experts predicted, Bing Ads announced that Expanded Text Ads would be coming to Bing in the coming months. While this is great news for Bing Ads advertisers, it’s also an opportunity to get started on the right foot and use Expanded Text Ads in Bing correctly.
In this post, Erin highlights five crucial elements of Bing Ads’ ETAs, and how their introduction could affect your campaigns.
9. AdWords Extends Timeline for Transition to Expanded Text Ads
By now, it’s clear that Expanded Text Ads are among the most powerful tools at advertisers’ disposal to dramatically lift click-through rates and improve the performance of their ads. That said, many advertisers are confused about what the transition to this exciting new ad format could mean for existing campaigns. To put your mind at ease, Mark explains exactly what the extension of the transition to ETAs in AdWords means for you, as well as what you can expect during the rollout.
10. Mobile Advertising Statistics & Trends [Infographic]
Did you know that clicks from mobile devices account for more than half of all ad clicks? In our final post of this month’s round-up, Mary offers up a fascinating infographic about the current state of mobile advertising, packed with juicy stats and figures that prove – in case you hadn’t heard by now – mobile is the way forward in PPC.
When I find myself eating the exact same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner during the work weeks I grow frustrated by the repetitiveness of my habits. Luckily, this isn’t the case with social media. In the world of social media marketing things are constantly changing, which is what keeps all of our jobs interesting.
Every week, social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are releasing new features and improving old ones, and naturally, our habits as marketers need to adjust to stay ahead of our competitors.
As summer’s winding down, it is time to start gaining a competitive edge before the holiday rush, which is why you need to pay attention to these three big social media marketing and advertising trends that are all the rage these days.
As video has taken over our social feeds, live streaming has popped up on the horizon as the hip new hip sidekick to regular video. Whether it be Facebook Live, Periscope, SnapChat, or Instagram, engaging with your audience in real-time through video is becoming essential to your social strategy. Video helps humanize your brand, but live video actually connects an individual to your brand in real-time, which is even more powerful than well-produced recorded content. The other benefit of live video is that the production quality isn’t expected to be high, which eases the production process.
Most recently we’ve seen big brands use live video in a variety of ways, from Marc Jacobs using live video to give a sneak peak of their 2016 fashion line, The Tonight Show providing a behind-the-scenes look backstage before the show, and Madden video games providing behind-the-scenes coverage of players.
But these are HUGE brands. How can you use live video? Live video can be used to build excitement about a new product release, show off your company culture, give live coverage of an event, or even host a live Q&A with your super-fans. The possibilities are endless.
Check out the post below for a live video we made at Wistia of the unboxing of the brand new Canon 5D MarkIV. This is a great use-case of live video as this new video camera is a pretty big deal for a huge chunk of our customers, so the live stream was especially interesting for our audience.
Still not convinced? Live videos receive 10x more comments than pre-recorded videos, according to the VP of Facebook in Europe, Nicola Mendelsohn.
Ahh! More new and exciting forms of interactive visual content. What could be better!?
Social slideshows are popping up in more and more social networks and for good reason! Social slideshows are easy to create and can utilize images, videos, or both. Advertisers can even pay to play for these babies leading to more, even more, exposure and interaction. So whether you’re showing off your new winter ski apparel or displaying videos promoting your upcoming conference, slideshows are a great way to help your social audience interact with your brand in a memorable way.
These ads also work! Take the sock company Stance for instance;comparing their static image ads to slideshow ads, they saw a decrease in cost per acquisition by 48%, a 2.42X increase in click-through-rate, and a 1.48 increase in return on ad spend. Pretty outstanding stuff! Facebook also just made some improvements to their slideshow ads, outlined here.
With different forms of content and social interaction, we’re also seeing more channels emerge as important places for marketers and advertisers to build a strong presence. Online social communities, run through platforms like Slack, are becoming a more and more important area for marketers to engage with their customers and prospects. Medium, Inbound.org, and Reddit are critical places to spread awareness of your content. Not to mention Snapchat and Instagram are taking over with sponsored stories and in-line ads. Long gone are the days of only having to maintain a Facebook and Twitter page.
“Now, forms of interaction are starting to diversify. Platforms like Snapchat are allowing more one-sided conversations, in a more fleeting, temporary context. Brands and consumers are able to talk to each other in new, more diverse ways, and that range is only broadening,” says Forbes contributor Jayson DeMers.
Instagram recently stole a page from Snapchat’s book by adding a story feature at the top of the feed. Now social browsers can see what their favorite Instagrammers are doing for 24 hours.
So why copy Snapchat? Perhaps Facebook is still a bit bitter about Snapchat’s declining to sell the app for $3 billion, but regardless the reaction to this new Instagram feature was mixed. Some were outraged, others pleased to have their snap stories moved to their favorite social network.
Regardless, this has been a big opportunity for businesses to showcase their brands in a prime location on the app. Large brands like Starbucks, Taco Bell, and JCrew have already been taking advantage, as well as smaller brands like Justin’s PB and HubSpot.
“Over time we look forward to introducing new advertising and other business opportunities as part of Instagram Stories,” says the Instagram Business Blog. “In the meantime, we’re excited to see all the ways our community will use it to highlight their businesses on Instagram.”
Did you know that over 900 million people use Facebook Messenger? WhatsApp has become one of the largest chat apps in the world. Seventy-seven of the top 100 Fortune companies use Slack. Chat is no longer just used for internal communications, but it’s being used more and more to engage with prospects in a more personalized manner.
“People are becoming more interested in actually communicating, rather than broadcasting,” according to Harvard Business Review.
Marketers need to start utilizing chat apps to engage in real-time with their leads rather than posting and wishing for the best. In the future chat, bots will likely make this scalable in new and fascinating ways.
Margot is a Customer Success Coach at Wistia. She loves all things digital, and spends her free time running, traveling, and cooking. Follow her on:
Twitter: @ChappyMargot
Google+: +Margot da Cunha
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha
Guess what! It’s the year of Mobile! Again!
This year, it’s the year of mobile payments, mobile recruiting, mobile advertising. The first hand-held mobile phone was sold thirty-one years ago for $4k; it was fourteen inches long. As our cell phones have shrunk in size and price, they’ve grown in value.
I am 100x more attached to my smartphone than I was two years ago—four years ago, I had just invested in my first smartphone. Instead of just being a handy tag-along to communicate, it is now my #1 resource for everything from social media, to Pokémon Go, shopping, finding an apartment, and diagnosing any mystery illnesses (thanks, WebMD!).
In search, SERPs have been advancing efforts to incorporate mobile-friendly ads. Mobile search spending is expected to increase by 62% over the next 3 years (Tweet This)! The Google changes this year include the loss of right-side ads on desktop (making every SERP look more like the mobile SERP), the introduction of huge Expanded Text Ads on every device and the return of device-level bid adjustments. At WordStream, we’re constantly reminding clients to make sure their websites are mobile friendly—or at the very least, their PPC landing pages are. (And if they aren’t, to avoid mobile landing pages altogether.)
Mobile drove more than half of the total paid search clicks this past Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and mobile conversion rates are constantly improving.With a smaller screen, different ad formats, voice search, and other variables at play, it’s much easier to fail on mobile. If you’re concerned about how you measure up, new features in our AdWords Performance Grader make it an even more valuable as a source of free competitive intelligence, especially for small and medium-sized businesses who are learning how to win in mobile PPC.
If you’re still not buying into the importance of mobile, we have an infographic from Invesp full of mobile advertising stats and trends to prove it! Don’t underestimate the power of your beloved iPhone and prepare yourself for even more ads targeted to your 6.5’’ screen.
